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PRICE 10 CENTS 


353. Sn’GI.C M'JIltCK 


Bv EDWARD GARRETT 


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' ’lie Seaside Library, Pocket Edition. Issued Tri-weekly. By Subscription $36 per annum. 

I righted 1885, by George Munro— Entered at the Post Office at New York at second class rates.— Feb. 12, 1885, 





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63 The Spy. By J. Fenimore Cooper. . . 20 

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66 The Romance of a Poor Young Man. 


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81 A Daughter of Heth. By Wm. Black. 20 

82 Sealed Lips. By F. Du Boisgobey. . . 20 
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85 A Sea Queen. By W. Clark Russell.. 20 


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87 Dick Sand ; or, A Captain at Fifteen. 

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88 The Privateersman. Captain Marryat 20 

89 The Red Eric. By R. M. Ballantyne. 10 

90 Ernest Maltravers. Bulwer Lytton.. 20 

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92 Lord Lynne’s Choice. By the Author 

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93 Anthony Trollopes Autobiography.. 20 

94 Little Dorrit. By Charles Dickens. . . 30 

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96 Erling the Bold. By R. M. Ballantyne 10 

97 All in a Garden Fair. Walter Besant. . 20 

98 A Woman-Hater. By Charles Reade . 15 

99 Barbara’s History. A. B. Edwards. . . 20 

100 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. By 

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101 Second Thoughts. Rhoda Broughton 20 

102 The Moonstone. By Wilkie Collins.. , 15 

103 Rose Fleming. By Dora Russell. . . , 10 

104 The Coral Pin. By F. Du Boisgobey. 30 

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107 Dombey and Son. Charles Dickens . . 40 

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Payn 20 

187 The Midnight Sun. ByFredrika 

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188 Idonea. By Anne Beale 20 

189 Valerie’s Fate. By Mrs. Alex- 

ander 5 

190 Romance of a Black Veil. By 

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191 Harry Lorrequer. By Charles 

Lever 15 

192 At the World’s Mercy. By F. 

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198 The Rosary Folk. By G. Man- 
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196 Hidden Perils. By Mary Cecil 

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220 Which Loved Him Best? By 

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221 Cbmin’ Thro’ the Rye. By 


Helen B. Mathers 15 

222 The Sun-Maid. By Miss Grant 15 

223 A Sailor’s Sweetheart. By W. 

Clark Russell 15 

224 The Arundel Motto. Mary Cecil 

Hay 15 

225 The Giant’s Robe. By F. Anstey 15 

226 Friendship. By “ Ouida ” 20 

227 Nancy. By Rhoda Broughton. 15 

228 Princess Napraxine. By “ Oui- 

( 3 ^ ” 20 

229 Maid, Wife, or Widow? By 

Mrs. Alexander 10 

230 Dorothy Forster. By Walter 

Besaut 15 

231 Griffith Gaunt. By Charles 

Reade 15 

232 Love and Money ; or, A Perilous 

Secret. By Charles Reade. . . 10 

233 “ I Say No or, the Love-Letter 

Answered. Wilkie Collins. ... 15 

234 Barbara; or, Splendid Misery. 

Miss M. E. Braddon *. . 15 

235 “It is Never Too Late to 

Mend.” By Charles Reade. . . 20 

236 Whicli Shall It Be? Mrs. Alex- 

ander 20 

237 Repented at Leisure. By the 

author of “ Dora Thorne ”... 15 

238 Pascarel. By “ Ouida ” 20 

239 Signa. By “Ouida” 20 

240 Called Back. By Hugh Conway 10 

241 The Baby’s Grandmother. By 

L. B. Walford 10 

242 The Two Orphans. ByD’Enuery 10 

243 Torn Burke of “Ours.” First 

half. By Charles Lever 20 

243 Tom Burke of “ Ours.” Second 

half. By Charles Lever 20 

244 A Great Mistake. By the author 

of “ His Wedded Wife ” 20 

245 Miss Tommy, and In a House- 

Boat. By Miss Mulock 10 

246 A Fatal Dower. By the author 

of “ His Wedded Wife ” 10 

247 The Armourer’s Prentices. By 

Charlotte M. Yonge 10 

248 The House on the Marsh. F. 

Warden 10 

249 “ Prince Charlie’s Daughter.” 

By author of “ Dora Thorne ” 10 

250 Sunshine and Roses; or, Di- 

ana’s Discipline. By the au- 
thor of “ Dora Thorne ” 10 


251 The Daughter of the Stars, and 

Other Tales. By Hugh Con- 
way, author of “ Called Back ” 10 

252 A Sinless Secret. By “ Rita ”. . 10 

253 The Amazon. By Carl Vosmaer 10 

254 The Wife’s Secret, and Fair but 

False. By the author of 
“ Dora Thorne ” 10 


(continued on third page of coyer.] 


AT ANY COST 


By EDWARD GARRETT. N 




NEW YORK: 

GEORGE MUNRO, P 

17 to 27 Vandewater Street, 



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AT ANY COST. 


\ 


CHAPTER 1. 

MOTHER AND SON. 

It was a wild December morning. Dwellers in cities splashed 
through the puddles iormed b} the heavy rain of the preceding night 
and fretted against, the exasperating wind, which made it a struggle 
to grasp their garments about them, and a still greater struggle to 
keep their tempers. Dwellers in quiet country places plodded along 
the heavp roads and grumbled at the hard conditions. of rural exist- 
ence in such weather. But our story begins with a woman and a 
lad who were tramping across a rock-bound treeless swamp on the 
largest of the Shetland Isles, and who neither grumbled nor even 
said a word about the weather, peihaps because they were too much 
accustomed to its harsh and inclement moods— perhaps because 
their hearts were both so full of other things, and that of one, at 
least, of feelings with which the gloom was more in accord than any 
sunshine could have been. 

The woman was still in the prime of life, scarcely forty years of 
age, and the tall lad at her side was her eldest child. * But Mrs. 
Sinclair, of Quodda School-house, had long parted from the last 
bloom of physical youth, and might have been more than ten years 
older than she really was. She was a small, slight woman of nerv- 
ous and excitable temperament, and life had^been, for her, little 
more than a long endurance. Toil and hardship had worn her 
frame, anxieties almost amounting to terrors had whitened her hair, 
but none of them had conquered her spirit of indomitable cheerful- 
ness. She had early made reckonings with her own heart as to what 
were its absolute necessities, and had found that, with her, love and 
the power of loving service far outweighed all privations and strug- 
gles, and so had resolutely accepted her full burden of these. Per- 
haps she had never before felt such a sinking of her soul as she did 
to-day, for at last change and pain were stealing into the very home 
and home-ties for which she had wrought and -suffered. It was 
time for Robert, her first-born, to go out and seek his fortunes in 
the great world. And now the very day of his departure had come. 

But as it is in the course of nature,* it must be’the will of God,” 
said the brave little woman to herself; “and if one lets one’s self 
begin to cry out against that, one never knows where one may end.” 

It troubled her sorely that during the recently past days she had 
not always been able to restrain her tears. For the sight of them 
vexed Robert, and had caused him to speak to her more than once 
in sharp words and with a morose manner, which she felt sure 


6 


AT ANY COST, 


woulu return upon his heart to sting it with a tender remorse when 
he should have gone away out ot her sight. 

She felt thankful that she did not think she should lose command 
of herself to-day. All the pathetic parting preparations had been 
completed, and with nothing more but the end lull in view, a des- 
perate calmness had settled on her. 

“ When one’s pain is worst, one shows it least. 1 know that,” 
she decided to herself. “ 1 believe that is the case with Robert. 
He has been feeling all the time'like I feel to-day.” 

“ Now,' Robert,” she gasped, for they were walking at a consid- 
erable speed and the wind nearly took away her bieath, “ you won’t 
forget always to let us have a letter. l r ou know it is such a long 
while between our posts, that if none comes by one ot them, we shall 
have a dreadful waiting for the next.” Her life had been worn 
down by constant waitings— waitings for her husband’s return from 
errands of duty,, and mercy, amid perils of darkness and cliff and 
wave — waitings for tidings of death among her own people in the 
far southern mainland. And somehow, too, she had always been 
the one summoned to share other people’s waitings— the vigils of 
fishers’ wives who knew not yet whether they were widows, and 
who craved for her presence and were consoled by it when they cculd 
bear none other. Alike when the worst came, or when fear faded 
through hope into glad certainty, she could be spared, and then 
ethers" might come to console or to congratulate. But she had 
always been the best angel of the waiting hours, whose touch was 
soft enough for hearts palpitating with uncertainty, arid who knew 
how to steer between that dread that is too like despair, and that 
hope which seems to tried hearts too much like indifference. Many 
a night through had she watched in narrow Shetland huts, while 
the wind tramped over the roof with a sound as of chariots and 
horses, and the sea roared and growled below like a fierce wild beast 
seeking his prey. She had known when to speak and when to keep 
silence; when to murmur a soothing text, and when only to trim 
the little iron lamp, or to add another peat to the glowing pile; 
when to kneel down and call out to God with that strange deep 
trust which we all find lying still and deep at the bottom of our 
hearts when storms of sorrow or fear are agitating our lives, and 
when simply and silently to prepare and proffer a cup of tea. But 
she knew, too, what all this had cost her. 

“ There’s enough waiting in life which no human hand can hin- 
der, Robert,” she^ went on, struggling valiantly for speech, for she 
did not want to slacken. pace, since Robert might need all his time. 
“I’ve had my share of’ that. 1 can see it was the lesson 1 needed, 
for 1 was of an impatient spirit. And I’ve certainly not had too 
much of it, for 1 can’t do it easily yet. But 1 think it’s a lesson we 
should leave in God’s hand, and not one we should set each other. 
So you’ll take care ab5ut the letters, Robert?” 

‘‘I’ll do my best, mother,” said the lad. <f But I expect 1 shall 
be often very busy. If you don’t get word of me you may be sure 
it is all right with me. Somebody else w T ould soon take care to let 
you know if anything went wrong.” 

“ I’m not so sure of that,” she returned. “ I’ve been thinking 
about that. Do you remember when the poor Norwegian sailor 


v . • ... r "■ 


AT AKY COST. 


7 


with his leg broken was carried up to our house from the wreck of 
the ‘ Friga’? Well, he wouldn’t write home to his mother till he 
was sure his leg wouldn’t have to be cut off. He said she would 
think no news was good news, and would be spared all trouble 
about his calamity if she never heard of it till it was over. And 
1 thought so, too, at that time; but somehow now I don’t. If 1 
don’t hear from you 1 shall be apt to fancy, ‘ Something is wrong 
with Robert; but he and friends axe saying that we will think no' 
news is good news,’ and that so they won’t trouble us till they have 
good news to send, But, of course, we don’t want you to be writ- 
ing letters home when it is your duty to be doing anything else,” 
she added, with true love’s ready alarm and reluctance lest it be- 
come a drag and a fetter on the progress of active life; “ but a line 
will not take you long, and it will make me do double the spinning 
and knitting on the day it comes in.” 

“ Yes, yes, 1 understand all that,” said Robert. “ But do you 
know, mother, 1 think you ought to go back? i can’t bear to see 
you gasping and struggling against the wind as you are doing, and 
there is no "time to walk more slowly or even to pick our way."^ You 
know 1 said you shouldn’t have come out at all,” he added in a 
rather gentler tone. 

‘‘ Your father could not leave the school,” she answered; “and 
1 could not bear that neither of . us should put jmu a bit on your 
-way.” (“ She’ll begin to cry, now,” thought the lad, for her voice 
faltered; but she did not.) “ Y r et, of course, 1 must not hinder 
you. I think I’ll leave you at the Moull. 1 have just a few words 
to say yet — I won’t take long about them. Robeit, my boy, 1 and 
3 7 our father piay that you may prosper with God’s blessing, but that 
you may always keep God’s blessing, whether you prosper or not. 
And you won’t forget your sister Olive, will you? She’ll have to 
depend upon herself, just like you, when we’re taken, and we’d 
not grudge parting from her sooner, if we saw it was for her future 
good. You’ll keep watch for opportunities to suggest to us for 
Olive, won’t you, Robbie? Y.ou know we are so out of the world 
down here.” 

“ Of course, 1 will, mother, if I see any,” said the lad, “ but it is 
scarcely likely that such will come my way.” 

“ What we are looking for is always to. be seen sooner or later, 
and those in London are at the heari of everything,” observed Mrs. 
Sinclair. “ But here we are at the Moull,” she said, stopping short. 
“Just stand still one moment, Robert— -I won’t come further.” 
They were at a point where the way wound between a high, mossy 
lull and a steep did. When they parted each would be out of 
sight of the other in a moment, so that there would he no heart-rend- 
ing lookings back. She had thought of this. 

“ Stand still one moment,” she repeated. “ I think there is some- 
thing to say yet.” She stood with her face toward the sea, gazing 
out upon its waste of gray waters dashing up against the fortress- 
like rocks which guarded the low, dank green hills and the little 
hamlets peeping lip among them. Something to say yet! There 
was a' world of yearning love and solicitude seething in her mother’s 
heart, but then such love and solicitude have to be condensed into 
much the same words as suits more common needs. She felt Rob- 


8 


AT ANY COST. 


ert give a slight, quick movement beside her; it might be of impa- 
tience, it might be of restive pain. It must be ended. 

“ Robert,” she cried, “ we shall be always thinking of you; and 
we do hope you’ll always try to believe we did our very best for 
you. And in time bring us back your own self improved. God help 
you to be good, Robert, God send you all true happiness. God keep 
you. God bless you. Good-by, good-by,” and then, as she released 
his hands from her straining clasp and looked up into his face, her 
love threw a playfulthouglit upon the wealth of its passion, like a 
rose on the top of a jewel-case as she added, “ And give my love to 
the trees, Robert ; and be sure you know them when you see them — ” 

And so she smiled upon him and turned away, and in a moment 
the curve of the hill hid them from each other. 

She did not stand still; if she had let herself do that she might 
have been tempted to hurry after him for yet another farewell. She 
hastened back 'along the lonely road which she had just trodden in 
his dear companjr. She did not lift up her voice and weep in her 
loneliness. Her imaginative nature had realized this pain too vivid- 
ly beforehand to be startled by any sudden stabs. Only, though 
the wind was behind her now, she still felt scarcely able to draw 
breath. There were lowly houses in sight, where the simple island 
hospitality would have readily rendered her rest and refreshment, 
but there are times when Nature’s is the only face we can bear to 
look upon. Besides, hasten how she might, it would be dark be- 
fore she reached home. The sun, which had not looked frankly 
from the sky all day, now displayed a lurid light behind the low 
hills to the west, throwing them into deep purple and violet shadow. 
She hurried on, for though there was nothing to fear in an island 
whose guileless population of many thousands scarcely need the 
presence of a single policeman, and though, of course, Mrs. Sinclair 
was quite above all belief in the mischievous fairies, the mysterious 
“ tangies,” or ghostly ponies, and other grotesque creations of the 
simple local imagination, yet in the darkness of a moonless night it 
would not be very pleasant traveling on a way where the dryest 
walking was to be found by jumping from stone to stone in the bed 
of candid little watercourses that were far more to be trusted than 
the treacherous moss, which received one’s foot only to close over 
it. At sundown, too, the wind wras almost sure to rise. It was 
well that Mrs. Sinclair was one of those who instinctively avoid all 
avoidable discomforts as being apt to throw one aside from one’s 
power to serve, and to compel()ne to be burdensome to others, for 
she was in that state of mind when the more selfish and reckless are 
inclined to court outward suffering as a relief from inward agony. 

There was scarcely a sharp word which she had ever spoken to 
Robert, however much for his good, which did not now seem to her 
to have been a harsh w r ord; and had she not often allowed him to 
see her disheartened, weary, and ailing, when, by trying just a little 
harder, she might have made believe to be as bright and well as 
usual? And bad she done Robert justice to the very utmost of her 
power? The dear father w T as such an easy man, so ready to let 
things take their own way, and so sure that everything was for the 
best. That was his nature, and could not be altered, she thought; 
and a sw r eet and sunny nature it was. She only wished her own 


AT ANY COST. 


9 


was like it, except that it might not do for two such to run together 
in such a troublesome world. Had they really done their best for 
Robert? Would he not find himself terribly behindhand when he 
went among other people who had Jived all their lives in the polished 
places of the world? Perhaps it had been a mere petty pride, an 
unworthy shrinking from patronage, which had made her withhold 
the lad from too much frequenting of the houses of the one or two 
neighboring proprietors; and perhaps Robert would blame her for 
it some day. 

Ah! she knew she did not miss Robert now— not yet— while the 
grasp of his hand was still warm upon her own, and while his last 
words were still ringing in her ears. She could almost be glad just 
now that he was going away from the constant storm and privation 
— from the dark, monotonous, empty days which she had often felt 
must be trying both to the boy’s temper and moral nature. But 
how would she bear the summer-time, when the separation would 
be growing longer and longer, and when she and Olive would take 
their spinning-wheels, or their knitting, out of doors, and watch the 
school-boys at foot-ball, but no more Robert among them; and when 
the fishing fleets would go and come, but there would be no Robert 
to go dowrn to the boats, and bring in the latest news? How would 
she bear to see the blue waves dancing in the sunshine, and to know 
they rolled between her and her boy, between him and all the old 
life that had been, and could be no more? 

And then again her heart reproached her, for she was a woman 
who sought to walk in the ways of divine wisdom, and the precepts, 
“ Take no thought for the morrow: sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof/ * seemed breathed into her ears almost as by an audible 
voice. No, she would not think of the future. It, and how she 
would bear it, vras God’s business and not hers. 

Then, with a strange rebound, such as onty highly-strung, wrung 
natures can comprehend, her thoughts went back to the past, to the 
richly-wooded, bowery Surrey vale, which she had left more than 
twenty years ago, and had never seen since, and she saw r before her, 
with all the startling clearness and detail of absolute vision, her 
ancient moss-grown cottage home, with its sweet old-fashioned 
flower-garden, and the gray tower of the village church among its 
guardian yews. Surely for one moment a balmy breeze from that 
vanished past softened the fierce winds of Ultima Thule! Surely 
she caught a waft from the myrtles which used to stand in a row 
on the parlor window-sill! Oh, w 7 hat a magician memory is! Mrs. 
Sinclair could have thrown herself down in the dark on the rough, 
w r et ground, to cry heT heart out in yearning for the homely faces 
of old neighbors, for the caw of the rooks in the squire’s park, and 
the ringing of the English bells on a Sunday morning. 

No, no, no; this would never do. Again the ancient oracle, to 
which she had never willingly turned a deaf ear, had its bracing 
word for her about “ forgetting those things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before.” Neither the 
future nor the past must lay violent hands on Ihe present. 

Was it tears or rain on her face? Either way, the rain soon 
washed ofi the tears, for it began to fall in torrents, soaking even the 
thick native shawl wdiich she wore pinned about her head, a more 


10 


AT AKY COST, 


appropriate covering in such a climate than any bonnet or hat could 
be. It was dark uow, and every moment the ground grew wetter 
and heavier, clogging the weary progress of her poor tired feet. 

“ I'm glad of the rain,” she thought; “it will keep down the 
wind. Robert won’t get wet in the cabin, and it will give him the 
smoother passage.” 

The way suddenly broadened into the valley where her journey 
ended. Here and there a solitary light sent out a spark of human 
cheer and habitation. She made straight to her own house, daring, 
now it was in sight, to realize that she was very tired. She lifted 
the latch. A glow of peat-smelling light and warmth rushed out to 
welcome her. 

“It’s well to reach home on such a night,” she said cheerily. 
“ And there’s father waking up from a pleasant dream ! And there’s 
my Olive got the tea all ready for her mother! Won’t it be grand 
when it’s Robert himself that we welcome hack again? And what 
a deal he will have to tell us! It’s terrible, this going away; but 
then there could be no coming home without it. And I’ve been 
thinking, Olive, we must begin at once to spin some of our finest 
wool, or even some flax, if there’s any still to be had in the island, 
to make Robert some light socks for the warm summers down 
south.” 

One is tempted to wonder sometimes why God makes such as 
Mrs. Sinclair to live in a world like this, where they seem doomed 
to the endurance of exquisite agonies which others never feel or even 
guess at, and so many of which, alas! others could often avert by a 
word, or even by a look — how much more by action! But let it be 
remembered that at every point at which pain can be received, there 
must be an equal capacity for receiving pleasure. And let it be ob- 
served that though the quivering nerves of thes3 sensitive natures 
may only leceive pleasure once for ten times that they are thrilled 
^ with agony, yet so exquisite is that pleasure, that it seems almost to 
* neutralize their huge disproportion of suffering. 

And what would the world belike if all souls were already so 
tempered? — ready to receive little but pain, yearning to render 
naught hut joy? Would not that be the very kingdom and will of 
God come upon earth, for which we pray daily, but over which we 
too seldom ponder? 

Let us think of these mart 3 T r-souls with a reverent exultation. 
They are God’s best pledge of what He has in store when all hearts 
—even these—- shall be satisfied forevermore. 


CHAPTER II. 

NEW ACQUAINTANCES. 

After his mother left him, Robert Sinclair plodded steadily on 
his road. He thought she was a good little woman to let him go at 
the last with so little fuss. 

Very likely he would not have to walk alone far. One other 
young Shetlander, at least, was also to sail in the same ship which, 
would take Robert away from the island Robert was almost sure 
to overtake Tom Ollison presently, or at any rate to meet him at the 


AT ANY COST* 


11 


half-way house, where travelers were wont to break their journey 
by a brief rest beside the fire, and a temperate meal of strong tea and 
home-baked bread. 

'If Robert’s way onward was somewhat less picturesque than his 
mother’s homeward one, it w’as also less lonely, that part of the 
country nearer its little capital being more populous than its remoter 
regions. Robert Sinclair quickened his pace, when he came in sight 
of a beautiful little bay, with many houses nestling among its cliffs, 
and a tiny church and a big manse standing on tne lip of the sea. 
One more up-hill tug, and he would reach his temporary resting- 
place.. 

He found the good woman of the little house bustling about in a 
state of unwonted excitement. If Tom Ollison bad not yet arrived, 
and Robert’s inquiries ascertained that he had not, she had other 
guests of much greater importance in her eyes. Not that she might 
not have preferred Tom, for she had all the old-fashioned island 
distrust of strange faces. But then strangers always meant money, 
ready money, and that is no small boon in a place where life rubs 
on mostly by a series of exchanges, of doubtfully ascertained values. 

Robert found no less than three people already awaiting the host- 
ess’s ministrations. But they were not all together — one sat alone 
and apart, quite extinguished by the presence of the others. He 
recognized this one, and she got up and courtesied to him because 
she knew he was the schoolmaster’s son at Quodda. This was little 
Kirsty Mail. He thought now that he had heard his mother say 
something about Kirsty ’s soon going to a servant’s place in the 
south; but his mother was always taking so much interest in these 
kind of people and things, that he could not be expected to remem- 
ber all the details. 

The other two were strangers, perfect strangers. Robert was sure 
of that the moment he saw them. They were seated m front of the 
open fire, spreading out their garments to dry in its genial heat. 
They both turned and looked at him; but they made no room for 
him at the fire, anymore than they evidently had done for Kirsty 
Mail; probably it did not occur to them that anybody was traveling 
but themselves. The one was a big burly gentleman with a face 
that would have been fine, but that its once noble outlines were 
blurred by too much flesh. It was the same with its expression. 
It was odd how so much good-liumor and kindliness could remain 
apparent among such palpable traces of peevishness, irritability, and 
something very like discontent. His long olive-green overcoat was 
richly furred about the neck and wrists, and there was a magnifi- 
cent signet-ring on the hand he held out over the glowing fire. 

The other was quite a young girl, and it was almost ridiculous to 
see the features of the father’s heavy, rather voluptuous countenance 
translated into her delicate beauty. But it was not everybody who 
could have eyes to see that his expression was also translated into 
hers, and still fewer, that it did not even gain by the transfer. Young 
vices go under such euphonious names: they are called “sweet 
petulance” and “airy scorn,” and “innocent thoughtlessness.” 
Alas! It is so often only when it is too late, when they have taken 
firm hold on the life and have ravaged it, and spread poison around 
it, that they are recognized for what they are! 


v 


12 


AT ANY COSTa 


“ I hope that good woman won’t be long in giving us something 
to eat, Etta,” said the gentleman to the young lady. “ I’d like to 
be into the town before dusk it possible; but I suppose it isn’t. 
There’s no knowing what the way may be like. What did she say 
she could let us have, eh?” 

“ 8he said something about eggs,” answered the girl indifferently. 

“And tea, eh?” added the gentleman, with a disgusted tone. 
At that moment Mrs, Yunson bustled into the apartment to spread 
a clean coarse cloth on the rough table. So he directed his inquiries 
to her. 

“ You don’t mean to say you can’t let me have anything stronger 
than that,” he said, as she set forth a dim tin tea-kettle. 

“ It’s real good, sir,” she answered. “ Tea’s a thing that keeps 
well, and we can get that good.” 

“ But 1 want some brandy — or at any rate some beer,” he said. 

“This isn’t a licensed house, sir,” said Mrs. Yunson. “There 
is not one nearer than Lerwick; there are very good ones there.” 

“ Well. 1 don't know how you get on in such a climate without 
something to comfort you,” observed the visitor. “ But 1 dare say 
you know how to take care of yourselves. There are nice little 
places among the rocks, Avhere nfte little boats can leave nice little 
kegs, eh? And, upon my word, 1 don’t see who could blame you. 
The revenue folk oughtn’t to be hard on people living in such a 
place.” 

“Indeed, and that’s very true, sir,” responded Mrs. Ymnson, 
going on with her hospitable duties. 

“ 1 suppose you really do have a good deal of smuggling here?” 
inquired the guest, lowering his voice to a more confidential tone. 

Mrs. Yunson shook her head. “Not now, sir,” she answered 
demurely. “ There’s a little tobacco, maybe, now and again, but 
not enough to be worth the trouble and risk. It is done more for 
the fun of the thing, than anything else, I do believe. The cloth is 
quite fresh and clean, miss,” she interpolated, seeing the young 
lady’s eye fixed with suspicious disfavor on sundry pale stains upon 
it. “ Those marks are just off the hay stack, on which it was dried. 
That’s the only w r ay we can manage in winter— the ground is that 
soft and dirty, and the wind’s too high for lines.” 

Miss Etta Brander began to sip her tea. She said nothing about 
its quality, which w T as really excellent, but she remarked that she 
could not touch the bread— she would rather starve— it was so 
lumpy. 

“ Well, Etta,” growled her father, “I should really think you 
could put up for once without grumbling with what other people 
have to live upon all their days.” 

Etta smiled superciliously; she knew she owed the reproof only 
to her father’s own irritation at having to go without his usual mid- 
day indulgence of a “ tot ” of brandy. . 

Mrs. Yunson asked it they had done with the tea-pot, that she 
might take it away to supply the wants of Bobert and little Kirsty 
Mail. 

Etta looked calmly at her, as if she either did not hear or did not 
understand what she said. But her father answered, “ Certainly, 


AT ANY COST. 


13 


certainly. Why dicl you not ask for it before? 1 did not know they 
were travelers too. 1 though they were your own boy and girl.” 

Robert’s cheeks flamed. To think of anybody’s mistaking him 
for a son of old Bawby Yunson’s! And yet was it to be wondered 
at, he admitted, thinking of his own rude and travel -stained appear- 
ance, and reflecting that people so accustomed to wealth and luxury 
as those before him, were little likely to observe those subtle marks 
of different rank which had hitherto been very visible to his own 
eyes. As for little Kirsty Mail, she was all in crimson confusion to 
think that anybody could imagine her a sister of young Mr. Robert 
Sinclair; how angry it would make him — such a smart young gen- 
tleman as he was! 

Mrs. Yunson made sundry strategic movements by which she 
contrived to suggest that even these humbler guests must have some 
share of the drying warmth of the fire, before they could be suffered 
to depart. The gentleman pushed back his chair and made room 
.for Kirsty. 

“ And where do you come from? And how did .you get here?” 
he asked, looking at her, with a smiling, half -contemptuous curi- 
osity, which is some people’s form of interest in an odd sort of 
animal. 

“ I came most of the way in a cart, sir,” faltered the blushing 
Kirsty. “ I come from Scantness.” 

‘‘And are you going to Lerwick? How are you going to get 
there?” 

4 ‘ Walking, please, sir,” said Kirsty, open-eyed, wondering what 
doubt there could be on that matter. 

“ It’s pretty rough work for such as } 7 ou,” said the stranger. 

“ Oh, they are used to it, pa,” remarked Miss Etta. “ Habit is 
everything in these matters.” 

“ And what are you going to do after you get to Lerwick?” Mr. 
Brander went on, as if nature had given him the right to ask all 
these questions because he was clad in broadcloth and sealskin, while 
Kirsty wore only coarse tweeds. 

“ I’m going to my aunt’s in Edinburgh — I’m to stay with her un- 
til 1 get a place,” answered Kirsty meekly. 

“ Oh, you’re off in the ship too, are you? And is not there any- 
body from home to see you off?” 

“ No, sir,” faltered Kirsty, “there’s only grannie at home, and 
she’s almost stone-blind.” 

“ It’s a wonder she did not want you to stay with her: how will 
she get on without you?” 

“ She lives with a woman who looks after her,” answered Kirsty. 

“And how does she live? 1 mean what supports her? The 
parish, 1 suppose— I’m told it’s getting quite the natural support of 
old ladies in Shetland,” observed Mr. Brander. 

“ Grannie gets money from my uncle in Inverness,” said Kirsty 
simply. 

“Oh,” said Mr. Brander, “ that’s very dutiful of him. I suppose 
he’s pretty well off?” 

“ He’s a journeyman baker, sir,” answered Kirsty. “ He sends 
her three shillings a week regularly.” 

“ And is that all she has?” 


14 


AT ANY COST 


“ She does a good deal of spinning and knitting yet, sir— almost 
as well as if she could see/' replied Kirsty, who was loyally proud 
of her grandmother in this respect. 

“ And does she make much by that?” 

Kirsty was dubious, and hesitated. 

“ 1 mean, how much can she earn in a week?” he said, impatient- 
ly varying the form of his question 

“ Indeed, sir, and I cannot tell that,” said Kirsty, blushing as if 
she deserved that he should scold her. 

” They don’t do it in that way, sir,” interposed Mrs. Yunson. 
“ Most of them just do what they can, and take it to the mer- 
chant’s, an’ he gives them what he can afford of the things they are 
wantin’. 1 dare say your grannie will make out her tea and her 
meal yet that way— the little she wants—” she added, turning to 
Kirsty. 

“ Indeed, an’ she does,” said Kirsty, greatly relieved. 

“ A very little goes a long way here, 1 imagine,” observed Miss 
Henrietta Brander. Little did she dream that in her slighting words 
she had given a succinct description of true affluence! 

“ But you don’t mean to tell me that those outlandish old things 
are still in actual use?” cried Mr. Brander, pointing to a spinning- 
wheel which stood m a corner of the room. 

“ Indeed, and it is so, sir,” answered Mrs. Yunson. “ 1 doubt if 
there’s a house in Shetland without one. We know all about our 
wool from the time it’s off the sheeps’ backs till it’s on our own. 
We couldn’t bear your manufactured things, sir; they would not 
serve our turn at all. There’s nothing but Shetland wool will keep 
out Shetland weather.” 

Mr. Brander lifted a corner of the shawl which Kirsty Mail was 
wearing, and felt it gently between his fingers. 

“ Y r ou would be satisfied with fewer fal-de-rals, Etta,” said he, 
“ if you had to make them up from the beginning, instead of run- 
ning about to shops and dressmakers!” 

Etta tossed her head. It was really too odious and too ridiculous 
that he should draw such comparisons. But then papa was always 
aggravating when he had not had his brandy. 

“ And aren’t you frightened to be going among such strange 
X>laces and people?” pursued Mr. Brander, still addressing Kirsty. 
” How will you manage all your little business? Haven’t you any 
luggage? Where is it?” 

” Grierson’s cart took up my box this morning, sir,” said Kirsty. 
“ He had to go into Lerwick with some geese to sell for Christmas 
time. And Tom Ollison will see me safe on board ship, and off again 
to meet my aunt at Leith.” 

“ Tom Ollison!” echoed Mr. Brander, with an inquiring look at 
Bobert Sinclair. And before Kirsty could stammer out that this 
was not he, a merry young voice cried from the threshold: 

“ Who wants him? Here he is! Haven’t I run the last bit of the 
way, I was so afraid 1 should miss you! There’s so many people to 
say good-by fo, and they have all something extra to say.” • 

The speaker was vigorously rubbing his feet on the home-made 
straw mat in the entry. Mr. Brander watched, amused. Even 
Miss Henrietta gave her supercilious smile. When Tom Ollison 


AT ANY COST. 


15 


came forward, and found whom he had been addressing so uncere- 
moniously, the swift color rushed to the very roots of his waving 
golden hair, but he only looked frankly into the unknown faces and 
smiled. 

“ 1 did not expect anybody was here but Kirsty and you, Rob,” 
he said, with implied apology. 

“ I expect you will have to be quick over your eatables, young 
man,” remarked Mr. Brander, with a smile, “ or you and this fair 
damsel will be terribly belated.” 

“ We’ll be in plenty of time for the boat, sir,” answered Tom; 
“thank you, sir, thank you,” as Mr. Blander pushed the homely 
viands toward Him. “And everybody is quite safe here at any 
time. There’s nobody to be met but those willing to do one a good 
turn.” 

“ Ah, 1 suppose so,” said Mr. Brander, half interrogatively. “ 1 
am told you hardly lock your doors at night hereabouts. Wonder- 
ful that seems to us, accustomed to cities like London and Glasgow. 
What is that you are saying, Etta?” 

“ That the houses do not look as if they held much worth steal- 
ing,” she said listlessly. “ 1 can scarcely tell wdiich are dwelling- 
houses and which are what our driver called lamb-houses!” 

“ You see we are all pretty much alike in Shetland, sir,” observed 
Tom Ollison, in his pleasant, frank manner. 

“ We might well be all a little better off,” sighed Mrs. YYmson. 

“ At any rate, nobody ever starves here,” said Tom Ollison, “ and 
that’s more than can be said for those places where there is plenty 
to steal in some houses. It’s not what is in oyr houses, but the 
houses themselves, which might be a little changed for the better. 
I’m glad the young lady has noticed how bad they are.” 

Somehow, there was an awkwardness in the pause which fol- 
lowed. 

“1 suppose the horse has had its feed by this time,” said Mr. 
Brander, rising. “ Is the chaise ready?” 

“ It’s standing at the door,” answered Mrs. Y 7 unson, bustling for- 
ward to proffer her assistance to Miss Etta with her wraps. “ l"ou 
must put on everything you can, young lady,” she advised, “ for I 
think there is going to be more rain.” 

44 lieugh!” said the young lady, sniffing at the quilted hood, with 
which she enveloped her seal skin -capped head, till little was visible 
of her face except her eyes — “ Heugh! how soon everything gets a 
smell of that horrid peat!” 

“We think it tine and healthy, ma’am,” observed Mrs. Yunson. 
“ The fish o’ the sea an’ the peat i’ the hills are the blessings God 
gives to Shetland,” 

Robert Sinclair had already gone outside. He wanted to have a 
look at “ the chaise ” — perhaps to put a few questions to its driver. 
Tom Ollison sauntered after him, and then Kirsty Mail stole out, 
not caring to be left alone with the “ gentry.” 

Robeit turned to young Ollison as he joined him, and drew him a 
little aside. 

“ Why! — do you know who those are?” he whispered. 

“ Ay, that 1 do,” said Tom, with a smile. “ That’s Mr. Brander, 


16 AT ANY COST. 

the London stock-broker, who has just got hold of Wallness and 
St. Ola’s Isle.” 

“Ought you to have said anything to him about the houses?” 
asked Robert. 

It was notorious that those on the Wallness estate were among 
the worst in the island. 

“ To whom ought one to speak about them if not to the land- 
lords? Ought we to only talk of their business behind their backs?” 
returned Tom; “ and i did not bring in the subject, neck and heels; 
the young lady led up to it. And as lie lias* just got hold of the 
property he’s not to blame for its condition yet— not yet! 1 thought 
I was in the nick of time.” 

The Branders came out of the cottage. Etta "was assisted into the 
seat beside the driver, for her father did not venture to take the con- 
trol of a strange horse on unknown roads. Etta made considerable 
demands on both him and the driver in the way of tucking her into 
her rugs, and securing them about her. At last she pronounced her- 
self “ as comfortable "as she could be in that miserable climate,” and 
hex father was free to clamber rather painfully into the back seat cf 
the vehicle, which had scarcely been built for people of his weight 
and proportions. His native good-humor revived as he looked for- 
ward to a more stimulating meal at the snug hotel in the town. 

“ 1 think we have roonffor another— a light one,” he said, look- 
ing at Tom Ollison, who had somehow piqued and interested him. 
“ Will you have a lift?” 

“ Thank you very much, I’m sure, sir,” said Tom brightly. 
“ But I’ve promised to look after Kiisty, and I’ve to look in at one 
or two houses with messages, and I’ve got to carry this to Ler- 
wick,” and he poised in his hand a strange strong basket made of 
closely bound straw. 

“ What in the name of wonder are you doing with that? It’s 
empty, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Brander. 

“ It’s a Christmas present from our farm lad to his sister, who is 
married, in Lerwick. It is to hold her peats. It is what we call a 
cashie,” explained Tom. “ The men make them in the winter even- 
ings. ” 

“ Web, as you've neither got a damsel to escort, nor a hamper to 
carrv,” said Mr. Brander, turning to Robert Sinclair, “ perhaps you 
will be glad of a lift? If so, up you get.” 

“ Thank you very much, sir,” answered Robert, instantly accept- 
ing the invitation. What a queer fellow Tom was! Kirsty must 
have come on safely enough without him; for that matter, Robert 
himself would have had to walk with her then. And Tom could 
have left the cashie at Mrs. Yunson’s for somebody else to take up 
at their leisure— the servant-lad would have easily inferred that it had 
been accidentally forgotten. However, Robert felt that he had little 
reason to criticise Tom’s “ queerness,” since in this instance it had 
given him an opportunity he must otherwise have missed. 

“ Well,” said Kirsty, as she and Tom set off on their march, after 
the chaise had rapidly driven away, “ I should not think anybody 
with all those beautiful wraps need grumble at any weather.” 

“ Don’t you think so, “Kirsty?” said Tom. “ 1 rather do. 1 think 


AT ANY COST. 17 

the wrapping up is the bother of it, for anjr of us. 1 should not like 
to be a fish if 1 had to put on water-proof.” 

“ Who is that young fellow we have left behind us?” asked Mr. 
Brander of Robert, as Tom and Kirsty waned small in the distance 
while the chaise rattled away. 

“Tom Ollison, sir,” Robert answered. “He is the son of the 
farmer at Clegga, out Scantness way.” 

“ A fine young fellow, it he only has good guiding and gets into 
the right way,” mused Mr. Brander aloud, revealing the purport of 
his words by adding, “ He ought to make a fortune witii that head 
of his and that taking manner. But it’s odd how those don’t always 
tell best in that direction. 1 shouldn’t wonder, now,” he went on, 
with a keen glance at his companion, “ if .you come back the richer 
man of the two.” 

Robert smiled demurely at the dubious half compliment. “ Tom 
was always cleverer than 1 was, ” he said. “ I’ve always known him : 
he went to my father’s school.” 

“ And you’re not going to follow your father’s profession? You’re 
wise. Plenty of work for veiy little money there— not a penny 
turned over without drudgery in it. Just work, work, work, till a 
man is w T orn out. /say that a man should make his fortune soon 
enough to enjoy himself while lie’s able to do so.” 

There was that in Mr. Brander’s manner which added as plainly 
as in words, “ as 1 have done.” Still Mr. Brander did not look a 
perfect picture of enjoyment. He was scanning the features of the 
country through which they were passing. 

“ Some of the houses are a little more like what one is accustomed 
to hereabout,” he observed. “ These all have some sort of window 7 , 
and mostly chimney-pots. About Wallness 1 noticed many with 
apertures in the roof foi a light, and a hole for the escape of smoke.” 

“ I’ve heard it said that those are most comfortable after all, for 
this climate,” remarked Robert. 

“ Well, perhaps so. Ha! 1 shouldn’t wonder — warm in winter 
and shady in summer,” assented Mr. Brander with a sense of relief. 
“ Only when one sees them one’s natural feeling is that one 
wouldn't like to live in them one’s self. ” 

“ The people are accustomed to them,” said Robert; “ it is quite a 
different thing. They have no idea of anything else.” 

“ And it’s really tolly to interfere with the habits of a commun- 
ity,” remarked Mr. Brander. “ I believe in keeping in old fashions. 
The world would be a ridiculous place if it was not for variety.” 

He began to think that after all he had not made such a bad bar- 
gain in acquiring the estate of Wallness. Certianly, he w r ould never 
have chosen it; it was not injiis line at all. He had hitherto taken 
his holiday pleasure on plans gradually ascending with his fortunes, 
fiom Margate and Brighton to Scarborough and Homburg; lie had 
stayed at the lakes once, and had been hoiribly bored, though he al- 
ways ownqd that the cooking was good. But Wallness and the 
island of St. Ola had “ come in his way,” as he would have termed, 
it, or he “ had got hold of them,” as Tom Ollison had expressed it, 
because, being an unentailed property, the last of their ancient 
owners had used them as security in sundry speculative proceed- 
ings, by which he had wildly hoped to realize some wealth where- 


18 


AT ANY COST. 1 


with to enrich himself, and do some justice to his barren and ill- 
drained acres, -a proceeding which, of course, had ended as it al- 
ways does. It had struck Mr. Brander that it did not sound bad to 
be the owner of an island, and to talk of “ his little place, Wallness 
Castle.” At any rate he would keep them for a little while; they 
had come into his possession at a time when he could not hope to 
gain much by selling the pledge he had taken of his neighbor, and 
it occurred to him that their value might be increased by a little ju- 
dicious application of the business principles which he had found to 
answer so well in his set in the city. He had been a little confound- 
ed by the utter novelty of all he had found at Wallness. He had 
mistrusted the late laird’s factor, had shrunk from the minister, 
and altogether had been inclined eagerly to seize an opportunity of 
insight into the workings of the native mind, which he shrewdly felt 
he was likely to get from either of the unsophisticated island lads 
whom chance had thrown in his way. l T oung Ollison had startled 
him by touching the already uneasy nerve of his conscience. Rob 
ert had f urnished him with exactly the arguments and points of view 
which had been needed to soothe it. He felt confirmed in his first 
opinion, that of the two this was the lad which would get on in the 
world. 


CHAPTER III. 

DIFFERENT PEOPLE’S DIFFERENT WAYS. 

The black darkness of night overtook Tom Ollison and Kirsty 
long before the changeful beacon-light of Bressay cheered them with 
the thought that Lerwick was nigh at hand. 

Tom had to make a little digression from his direct path to visit a 
primitive village, that he might say “ good by ” to one or two “ old 
folks ” who had once worked on his father’s “ place.” And as it was 
from this village that the Lerwick people got most of their peats, it 
also occurred to Tom that “ it was ill carrying in an empty cashie,” 
when he might spare somebody one journey by filling it at once. His 
father had intrusted him with one or two silver coins as “ New 
Year tokens” for these ancient dependents, and somehow, when 
Tom thought how their hardworking lives were fast closing in, while 
his was beginning in youth and health and hope, and how their grand 
old faces might very likely be at rest under the rough turf of the 
bleak churchyard before he could come back, he felt he should like 
to give them a little pleasure now, while they were within his reach, 
and so he supplemented his father’s gifts with all the munificence of 
youthful sensibility. The old folks received his kindness with the 
dignity of their years, with almost as little show of emotion as might 
be displayed by stone deities when offerings are laid at their shrine. 
But when he was gone, slinging the now weighted cashie over his 
strong young shoulders, one old dame said to her ancient neighbor 
that, “ the Ollisons had always the open hand; it ran in the race; 
not the ill -closed- together fingers that let the money slip through, 
but the thumb that bends far back, and kens how to give.” And 
the veteran had answered sternly, “ that he knew naught o’ such 
auld wife’s sayings, but he reckoned the world wad be none the 
poorer if such as Tam Ollison were rich.” 


. AT AKY COST. 


19 


Tom had iull license for his liberality, for as the youngest son of 
a widower— well-to-do, according to island estimates, and already 
relieved from all charge of his elder children— the lad had started 
from home with a fairly liberal allowance for his journey in his 
pocket, and without an} r strait injunctions as to how these should be 
applied. “ Do what you feel is best under the circumstances which 
arise, Tom,” old Mr. Ollison had said. “ Think what is right and 
fair, that’s the best advice 1 can give you, my boy, because 1 can’t 
foresee every turn, and this will fit them all.” 

At last the crow r ded lights of Lerwick itself brightened on the view 
of the young travelers, but not before the staggering steps and roys- 
tering shouts of sundry wayfarers they encountered had announced 
diat they were in the "vicinity of that stage of civilization of which 
“ licensed houses ” form an important item. 

Tom had promised Kirsty’s grandmother to take her to the Cleg 
ga farnvservant’s married sister, where the girl could get rested and 
refreshed and await the boat that would take them off to the ship. 
Kirsty had never been in “ a town ” before, and was awed and mys- 
tified as he followed Tom through the steep, narrow lanes. She 
started and exclaimed at what at first seemed to her in the darkness 
to be a gaunt arm stretched over a low wall in Chromate Lane. It 
was but the stumpy bare bough of a stunted tree. But when they 
cirrived at their destination, and she was welcomed by faces which 
she had known in Scantness, lier spirits revived, and she once more 
found the tongue which she seemed to have lost during the latter 
part of the journey. 

There was nothing for Tom but to stay where be was, in the mean- 
while, and partake of the homely viands which were eagerly set be- 
fore him. He was not the less welcome because he found he had 
come to a house full of trouble. The young husband, Peter Lauren- 
sen, had met with a serious accident which had thrown him out of 
work, and would keep him idle for some time, besides probably 
entailing a difficult surgical operation, which would have to be per- 
formed amid all the disadvantages oi a small, dark, ill-ventilated 
room, the sole dwelling of the young pair, their baby, and an old re- 
lation, there being no hospital in the town, nor indeed in the island, 
for the reception of such sufferers. The young wife, too, was ail- 
ing, though there was little wrong with her except the exhaustion 
due to her strange accumulation of incompatible duties as house- 
mother, bread-winner, and nurse. Her face looked worn and weary 
even amid the delight of welcoming her brother’s master’s son, and 
pouring out upon him a flood of deprecating thanks for his trouble 
in carrying over the “ casliie ” tvhich her brother had been so 
“ mindful ” as to send, and still more for his thoughtfulness in fill- 
ing it by the way, and so saving her one toilsome walk to the Hill 
of Sound. “They may call the hill the poor folk’s doctor,” said 
she with her pale smile. “ An’ I’ll not say it’s not wholesome for 
ns, taking us out from overmuch sitting wi’ our pins and our 
wheels. But one may have too much o’ a good thing, and 1 think 
whiles it’s like the rest o’ the doctors, and sometimes kills instead of 
cures.” 

The ship did not sail till midnight, and after Tom and Kirsty had 
had their tea, the youth proposed going down into the main street to 


20 


AT AKY COST. 


ascertain when a boat would start to take them on board. He 
thought, too, that he might come across Robert Sinclair and join 
forces with him. Kirsty timidly asked if she might accompany him. 
“ She’d be feared to go alone, and she’d like to see the shops.” Tom 
readily assented. He knew Lerwick very well, and was not wholly 
unfamiliar with larger towns, having paid short visits to Kirkwall, 
Inverness, and even Aberdeen, though London, the goal of his pres- 
ent journey, with its seething millious, and its sharp contrasts of glory 
and gloom., still loomed shadowy on his imagination. He thought it 
would be great fun to hear Kirsty’s admiring ejaculations before the 
first fine edge of her new experiences should be worn away! 

Kirsty hung before the windows of the grocer and the baker, just 
as fine ladies do before those of the mercer and the milliner. She 
had scarcely realized that there were so many jam-pots and tea- 
boxes and short-cakes to be seen together anywhere in the wide 
world! As tor the draper’s, the fancy shops, and the bookseller’s, 
they fairly struck her dumb. Point d’Alengon and gems from Gol- 
conda could not have impressed her more than did those ruffles of 
cheap lace and strings of imitation beads. But Tom resisted a rising 
inclination to indulge himself by making her the supremely happy 
possessor of one or two of these gewgaws. For he said to himself 
that they would be of no use tocher; they were not so fine as they 
seemed to her, and Kirsty must get into the habit of seeing such 
things without thinking of getting them. This was wisdom which 
he had learned for himself, at the cost of sundry thoughtless little 
purchases when shops had been as novel to him as they were to Kirsty. 
But it was another matter when Kirstv lingered opposite the book- 
seller’s, admiring a simple little framed print of an old woman at her 
spinning- wheel, "which seemed to her tear-filling eyes a very portrait 
of “grannie.” Tom darted in, and bought the pretty trifle, and 
placed it in the girl's hand, telling her it would do to hang in her 
bedroom wherever she went, to keep her in remembrance of Shet- 
land, home and grannie! And then he stopped hei;. bewildered 
thanks by taking her into his confidence as to what he should buy 
for their poor sick host and his weary young wife. 

“ It shall go into their place after we’ve left,” he decided; “ the 
sight of us from the old home has cheered them up a bit, and after 
we’ve gone again, they will feel a little downhearted, and it will do 
them the more good. Do you think they would like a goose, 
Kirsty?” 

“ ’Deed and I do,” said the girl,-“ but, Master Tom, it will cost 
a lor o’ money in the tow T n.” 

“1 can manage that,” answered Tom, who had been looking 
through his purse, and going over some rapid mental calculations 
which he did not expound to Kirsty. “ And a few oranges will be 
nice for the sick man; he can take one when his wife isn’t at home 
to give him tea— there’s more fruit in Lerwick just now than there 
is generally, because Christmas is so near. And don’t you think it 
would be a good idea to send one of those little short-cakes with ‘ A 
Happy Kew Year ’ printed on it in sugar plums? That will give a 
sort of good grace to all the rest, won’t it, Kirsty?” 

His rapid suggestions, which seemed so sumptuous in her eyes, 
nearly took Kirsty’s breath away, but she got into the spirit of the 


AT ANY COST. 


21 


thing, and made a shrewd market of the goose, and a good selection 
among the short-cake. Oranges she did not know so much about, 
having only tasted two or three in her life, so Tom gave her one or 
two to put in her pocket for the voyage. ' He got all his commodities 
gathered in the grocer’s shop, whose kindly master seemed quite to 
enter into the situation, and promised that the parcel should be sent 
faithfully to the address which Tom wrote on the outside of an en- 
velope, on whose inside lie put, “ This is something to cook over the 
peats out of the new cashie, with Tom Ollison’s love.” 

They walked the whole tortuous length of the queer chief street, 
and ascertained that they could have a share of a boat which was to 
take some people fiom the principal hotel to the ship. As they had 
seen nothing of Robert Sinclair, it occurred to Tom to ask the waiter 
if he knew who these people were, and the answer he got was that 
the gentleman was “ the new man that had got Wall ness and St. 
Ola’s, and a young lady, and a young gentleman.” This last, Tom 
decided, must mean Robert himself, as Robert had not been to Ler- 
wick for a long time, and was not likely to be known to anybody 
there. 

The boat was to start within an hour, and they would just have 
time to go back to the Lailrensens to bid them good-by. They were 
both a little ni3 r sterious over their secret, so that Mrs. Laurensen said 
to her husband that she wondered what that girl Rirsty was giggling 
at, and she hoped that Mr, Tom had had things as he liked them, 
for he seemed rather quiet like. But half an hour later Peter and 
his wife understood all about it! And Mrs. Laurensen said, 

“ Now, Peter, that’s the sort o’ folk that ought to be rich.” 

And Peter replied with a quiet chuckle, “ Giving away as you go 
along isn’t the way to get rich, Kate. Leastways, it riches means 
lots o’ money.’ ’ 

When Kirsty and Tom reached the boat, they found they had not 
been mistaken about Robert Sinclair. He was with Mr. Brander and 
Miss Henrietta. And as they sat in the little vessel, rocking in the 
darkness, while Mr, Brander fussed about his luggage, Robert left 
the young lady and came to their end of the boat to whisper that he 
had been invited to join them at their hotel dinner, and that Mr. 
Brander seemed to make sure that he would travel in their part of 
the boat, and that he really- thought he might do so, seeing that their 
hospitality had already spared his cash a little. It was really a great 
thing to get a chance of being friendly with such people. He hadn’t 
originally meant to travel first-class, lie had half hoped to get Tom 
to join him in the humbler part of the ship (he said this, rightly 
guessing that Tom’s allowance and marching orders would permit 
him to do what he liked either way). It would not be a very great 
extravagance, for the Branders, though they lived in London, were 
to stop in Edinburgh, where they would remain till after the new 
year came in, and after they were gone, Robert could resume his 
original plan, 

“I’m going to travel in the steerage,” said Tom, rather dryly. 
For this was the economy on which lie had resolved to straighten 
his accounts after his littfe beneficences. 

“Are you doing this out of sheer contradiction, Torn?” asked 
Robert, feeling somehow nettled. 




AT ANY COST, 


“ No,” replied Tom, more frankly. “ I made up my mind about 
it while 1 was in the town.” 

“ Mr. Brander has given me his card with his London address on 
it already,” confided Robert. “ He asked me to call on him. I’m 
sure he would ask you, too. 1 think he took a fancy to you, little 
as he saw of you,” he added, trying to defend himself, to himself, 
against a seciet consciousness that he was not altogether sorry that 
Tom was behaving as “ queerly ” as usual. “ Are you sure you’ve 
made up your mind, Ollison?” 

“ Quite sure,” said Tom, moving a little aside, as at that moment 
Mr. Brander stepped heavily into the boat, making it sway from side 
to side, and causing the unaccustomed Kirsty to grasp Tom’s arm in 
terror. 

“ I’m glad you’re to be in the steerage, too, I’ve been hoping so 
all the while, but 1 didn’t sav so,, because 1 did not think it likely,” 
she whispered. “Now if there’s a storm, I’ll know you’re not far 
oft. You wouldn’t forget me?” she pleaded. 

Tom laughed. “ Of course, 1 wouldn’t,” he said; “ but 1 don’t 
think there will be any storm to-night.’' 

The boat began to move oft toward the ship, and Kirsty suddenly 
realizing that the waste of waters had already begun to roll between 
her and home and grannie, began to cry quietly. 

“ And so you two are starting out to make your fortunes,” said 
the sonorous voice of Mr. Brander. He meant the two youths, for 
he never would have thought of such as Kirsty in such a connection. 

“ 1 hope we shall do so, sir,” said Robert Sinclair. 

“ It should not be a matter of hope, but of will, young man,” re- 
joined the senior. “ if a man means to get on, lie has only got to 
say, ‘ 1 will get on at any cost,’ and then he does get on. That’s 
what I said when 1 left home. I left a poorer home than either of 
yours, 1 reckon. And I’ve not clone so badly, and I’ve not done 
yet.” 

Even as he spoke his face looked a little sour in the moonlight. 
For two thoughts rose in his mind and troubled him. First, that 
his earliest business connection chose to consider him a dishonorable 
man, and always said so, and that though he denied the justice of 
the opinion, or at least always talked about “ charity ” when h<? 
heard of it, he could not deny the facts on which it was based. 
Second, that his own boyish ambition had been to buy “ the Flail ” 
of his own native village, and that by some freak of circumstances, 
just before he became possessed of means so to do, it had been pur- 
chased by the trustees of a great charitable association, ancl con- 
verted by them into an idiot asylum, whose poor patients wandered 
aimlessly in the sweet parterres which were to him as Naboth’s 
vineyard was to King Ahab. 

But while Robert Sinclair- repeated to himself Mr. Brander’s 
asseveration, and only hoped that itmight be true in his, Robert’s own 
case, Tom Ollison had scarcely heard it; Tom stood up in the 
darkness, with his head bared to the silent stars, and in-his blue 
eyes there was a strange moisture which melted down the lights of 
Lerwick town into one luminous cloud. Kirsty Mail looked up at 
him, awed. Was he praying? she thought. He was, though he 
scarcely knew it himself. But perhaps no prayer goes so straight to 


AT AKT COST. 23 

God as the wordless aspiration alter His will, the blindfold dedica- 
tion thereto of one’s secret self and one’s unknown future. 


CHAPTER IV. 

A PEEP INTO THE WORLD’S WAYS. 

The voyage to Edinburgh was got over — as such voyages are in 
the lives of those to whom they are adventurous novelties— with 
mingled raptures and qualms, with expressions of delight in “ a life 
on the ocean wave,” sinking into inward resolves that if one ever gets 
safely to land, one will never set foot on a ship again, unless, in- 
deed, it might be to return whence one came, never more to depart 
thence. Such resolves, however, are generally quite forgotten within 
an hour after landing. For nur memory always colors a sea-voyage 
with the glowing pleasure of its close —the arrival, as the Psalmist 
expresses it, “ at the haven where we would be.” 

Mrs. Brander, who had remained with friends in Edinburgh while 
her husband and daughter made their trip to Ultima Thule, was 
down at the docks, awaiting them in her carriage. Mrs. Mail, 
Kir sty’s aunt, was there also, standing close beside the carriage. 
Mrs. Brander had been speaking to her, and afler Mr. Brander had 
exchanged a few words with his wife, Mrs. Brander called Mrs. Mail 
again, and with an eye critically fixed on Kirsty, told the aunt that 
it had just occurred to her that if, in a day or two, she and her niece 
came up to where Mrs. Brander was staying, she might — Mrs. Bran- 
der could not promise she would — but she might— receive a proposal 
which would be most advantageous to her. Then the Brander car- 
nage drove away, Mr. Brander shouting back to Robert Sinclair, 
“ Shall be in London next week— and mind you don’t forget me — 
but I sha’n’t let you.” 

” Why, aunt, do you know’ that lady?” whispered Kirsty, so 
overcome by the plumes on Mrs. Brander’s bonnet and the gold 
bracelet on the wrist visible at the carriage door that she did" not 
notice her hard tones nor the absence of kindliness in her words. 

“ 1 go charing sometimes for the family the lady is visiting,” an- 
swered the aunt, “ so she knew my face, Kirsty, and when she saw 
me at the docks to-day she called me, thinking 1 might have been 
sent after her with some message. Then I told her 1 Vas expecting 
of a young niece a-iooking for a place. It would be the making of 
you it you got employed by that kind of peoj)le, Kirsty.” Mrs. 
Mail was meanwhile making suggestions of courtesies toward Robert 
Sinclair, who appeared in her eyes as one traveling with Mr. 
Brander’s party — perhaps even of his family— for the carriage had 
gone oft so laden with luggage that it was quite likely that any youth 
—even though a son — should have been left to follow on foot. Mrs. 
Mail did not heed Tom Ollison. 

” Where are your things, Kirsty?” she asked. ” 1 reckon you’ll 
not have more than you can carry.” 

Kirsty had a strong, heavy box and a basket. She and her aunt 
might just manage to carry these between them, but they would 
certainly require all their strength. 


24 


AT ANY COST. 


“ Well, 1 suppose we’ll part from you here, Kirsty,” said Robert 
Sinclair. “ We are going straight to the railway station, and Mr. 
Brander said we should only just have time to get some refresh- 
ment before the London train starts. So good-by, Kirsty, and 1 
\iope 'you'll get a good place and do well.” 

He did not shake hands with Kirsty.- He had just shaken hands 
vitli Henrietta Brander, and somehow it began to seem to him not 
|uite natural to offer the same salutation to both. Tom Ollison held 
vjut his harid to the girl, and then paused, to ask Mrs. Mail: 

“ But which way are you going? Does your road lie toward the 
station?” 

“ Yes,” she said, “ it do; an’ it’s a good step. 1 reckon this box 
will take a day’s work out of me.” 

'‘I’ll give you a hand,” answered Tom, “as our ways are the 
same. The weight’s nothing to me.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mrs. Mail, quite composedly. “ I like to see 
a young man make himself handy.” 

“ What has become of your own luggage?” Kirsty asked. 

“ Mine and his,” answered Tom, nodding toward Robert, “ and a 
lot of goods of all sorts are being taken on a cart straight from the 
ship to the train.” 

Robert Sinclair looked round, saw what had come to pass, and 
walked on several paces ahead. Kirsty followed behind with the 
basket, a little mystified, and feeling that she was already learning 
many “ ins and outs ” of the world of which she had never dreamed. 
Tom Ollison’s ready helpfulness was only what her general island 
experiences would have led her to expect from anybody. But it be- 
gan to dawn upon Kirsty that this w r as not quite “ the correct 
thing ” here, and also that surely there was some distinction of de- 
gree between Robert and Tom, of w r hich the islanders had never < 
dreamed, but which, had they been fairly questioned on such a 
matter, they would probably have reversed, since the ample hos- 
pitality of Ciegga Farm and the despotism of old Ollison were much 
more impressive in their eyes than cramped Quodda schoolhouse, 
and the light rule of the easy-minded schoolmaster. But there was 
no doubt that the Branders were “ the gentry,” the owners of Wall- 
ness and St. Ola could be no less, and it was very clear that there 
was a very different relationship between them and Robert Sinclair, 
and between them and Toni Ollison. Kirsty had not heard that the 
first offer of the vacant seat in their trap had been made to Tom, 
and it never occurred to her that the money she had seen him ex- 
pend on herself and the Laurcnsens would have amply sufficed to 
make him the Brander's cabin companion. It began to seem to 
Kirsty that Robert must be “ more of a gentleman ” than Tom. It 
is a truth, and a very sad truth, that in the great averages of human 
intelligence and feeling, there is, reversing the divine order, a terri- 
ble aptitude to value" those who take above those who give, those 
who are served above those who serve. When Jesus washing the 
disciples’ feet had not become a sacred picture, framed in the senti- 
ment of centuries, but was an actual fact of the day, with all its . 
little matter-of fact concomitants, perhaps it would have needed an- 
other Jesus to fully understand and appreciate the incident. This 
failure of comprehension and sympathy in the human mind and 


AT AKY COST. 


25 


heart lies about the very root of many upas-trees of human life, 
which it is in vain to cut level with the ground, as long as the root 
remains to sprout again. He who brings one human soul to the per- 
fect and practical understanding of the sacred rule, “ Whosoever 
will be great among you, shall be your minister, and whosoever of 
you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all/’ has done more for 
the cause of eternal freedom and progress, than he who succeeds in 
abrogating whole codes of unjust laws, while leaving untouched the 
Christlessness in which they originated, 

Tom found he could just spare time to help the two women with 
the heavy box up “ the stair,” on the top “ land ” of which Mrs. 
Mail lived. He could not linger a moment more, so that he barely 
noticed the admiring glances which Kirsty threw round the apart- 
ment into which her aunt led her. It was one of two that formed 
Mrs. Mail’s house, which was certainly not too roomy for her re- 
quirements, since she had a husband and grown- up children. But 
in spite of sundry queer gabled comers, it had large, clear-paned 
windows, a “ fitted grate,” and “four-post” bedsteads, so that its 
proportions and appointments seemed magnificent to Kirsty’s Shet- 
land eyes. VfUat gay wall-paper 1 "What pretty chintzes! What 
wonderful ornaments (in the way of Bohemian vases and paper 
flowers)! And nothing seemed stained with damp and weather, as 
everything' was in Shetland! Oh, what a pity granny was too old 
to leave home, and too blind to see much if she did! For Kirsty 
felt as if she had indeed come to a land overflowing with comforts 
and luxuries. Hot in that first delicious bewilderment could she 
realize what it Was to be surrounded b} 7- acres of sordid houses, 
through whose many fever-stricken rooms the fetid air crept Heav- 
ily, in place of that pure north wind which blew in from the sea to 
wage a not unequal or unsuccessful struggle with the darkness and 
disease of the Shetland hovels. Hot then could she understand how 
it felt to lie wakeful at night, listening, not awed and elevated, as 
she used to be, by the roar of the tempest, but shrinking from the 
polluting clamor of drunkards and abandoned women in the street 
below, while the first sounds that would greet one in the morning 
would be no longer the glad cry of the sea-gulls, but the wails of 
children who wanted breakfast and found none. 

Kirsty was so taken up by all she saw, that she was not very 
prompt in her thanks to Tom for his kindness, and when she saw him 
run off, she scarcely realized that he was really away at last, and that 
there was no knowing when or where she should see him again. 
Mrs. Mail did not thank him at all; he was only a fellow-steerage- 
passenger of Kirsty ’s, who had done a civil thing, and her aunt 
asked him carelessly if he would stay and take a bite with them, 
and when he said he was in too great a hurry, she let him depart, 
without more question or ado. 

“Oh! is he really gone?” cried Kirsty, as, looking from the 
window, she saw Tom scampering off, at full speed, down the 
street. “Oh! dear, dear, and I scarcely said good-by, or even 
thanked him!” 

“ And what’s all this work about?” asked Mrs. Mail, dryly. “ 1 
asked him to stay for a cup of tea if he liked— one couldn ’t do no more 
than that. What’s the young man to you, I’d like to know? It 


26 


AT AHY COST. 


won’t do for you to go picking up with strangers and getting so 
thick with them in this place, l ean tell you!” 

Mrs. Mail’s own daughters kept her hands full and her temper 
sour, only she judged them to be “ pretty well able to take care of 
themselves.” But if she was to have another girl thrown upon her, 
equally willf ul and wrong-headed, plus a primitive ignorance and 
simplicity, then, ‘‘there would be a nice mess,” and ‘‘ a piper to 
pay.” So she thought she had better begin at once with mysterious 
hints and warnings"^ Inch might keep Kirsty safe in a wholesome 
terror, until she, too, understood the ways of the worid! 

“Stranger!” echoed Kirsty, astonished. “ That was Mr. Tom 
from Clegga Farm. He’s going up to London with that other one 
who walked on in front.” 

“ What! the young gentleman who was with Mr. Blander and his 
daughter?” asked Mrs. Mail. 

“ That was Robert Sinclair, son of the schoolmaster at Quodda,” 
returned Kirsty, with a slightly resentful accent, for she noticed the 
difference in her aunt’s phrase concerning the two, and did not re- 
sent it the less that it was in harmony with her own recent thoughts. 

“ He’s quite a gentleman, whoever he is,” said Mrs. Mail. “ You 
might be sure of that, or Mr. Brander wouldn’t have been speaking 
to him. The Branders ate real grand people, ever so rich. Very 
likely the young gentleman is well connected ; they think a great 
deal of that sorfof thing.” 

“ I don’t think Mr. Brander had ever seen or heard of Robert 
Sinclair before to-day,” persisted Kirsty, still vexed, she hardly 
knew why. 

“Ah! the same sort soon find each other out,” said Mrs. Mail, 
uttering truth in a false connection, as we are all so apt to do. 
“ That’s the real thing, as 1 say to Mail, when he’s going on about 
Freemasonry, and what a grand thing it is for masons to know each 
other all over the world. "Says 1, ‘ Mail, there is none living, would 
ever take you for anything but what you are, and that’s a common 
working man — and no mason at all— but just a plasterer!’ ” 

Kirsty listened, dumb founded by this flood of new ideas and 
incomprehensible theories. Her aunt went bustling about. Pres- 
ently she resumed, 

“ The girls will be in by and by. It’s high time they’re come, and 
they won’t dawdle about this evening, keeping me waiting, as they 
often do, because they’re expecting you’d get in about now. As 
soon as you’ve had something to eat, 1 reckon you’ll be glad to go 
to your bed, for there’s little rest worth mentioning to be had on 
board ship. And then l dare say they’ll he off out again as they 
generally are.” 

Kirsty was just explaining that, though she had been very wake- 
ful during the earlier stages of her voyage, yet she had enjoyed some 
capital sleep later on, when her cousins arrived, and greeted her 
■with an effusion which would have been kindlier had it not been 
too palpably inquisitive aud even a little sarcastic. They were tall 
girls, quite" young women, and seemed much older than Kirsty, 
■who decided that Jane, the elder, was the prettiest, but that Hannah 
had the pleasantest manner. They both spoke quickly and shrilly, 
and addressed their mother impatiently, as if she had always disap- 


AT ANY COST. 


27 


pointed their expectations, and was sure to do so. They were 
dressed in very cheap, but showy and unserviceable garments, 
smartly made. Jane had a long feather around her hat, and Han- 
nah had a bunch of frowsy poppies in front of hers, and she wore a 
ring with red and blue stones on one of her fingers. 

Tliey asked carelessly after “ father,” and were told that he had 
got a job which had taken him into the country, and would keep 
him there for a few days. Whereupon Hannah said jocularly that 
that ^as “ a good job,” and she presently asked Kirsty whether she 
had quite made up her mipd to domestic service? Wouldn’t she 
like factory life a deal better?— one had one's evening to one's self. 

“ Kirsty ’s always been used to keeping herself to herself in-doors,” 
said Mrs. Mail severely. “ Kirsty ’s’ going to get a good situation in 
a gentleman’s house. Kirsty won’t trouble herself with none of your 
nonsense.” 

It puzzled Kirsty to think that her aunt had not brought her own 
daughters up to the way of* life she seemed to recommend. What 
was good enough for her cousins would be surely good enough for 
her. Kot, certainty, that she had any leanings that way yet. She 
was too much dazzled by that probable prospect of service with the 
Branders in the still remote Ei Dorado of London, 

Hannah proposed to take Kirsty out for a walk, but Kirsty some- 
how felt that her aunt preferred she should remain at home, and 
submitted to the implied wish. Then the girls said they wouldn’t 
go out either, on which their mother remarked, “ that wonders 
would never cease,” and one of the three suggested that they should 
look through Kirsty ’s clothes, “ to see if there was anything else 
she should get in case she had to go off to a good place in a hurry.” 

Kirsty proudly displayed her few garments, simple in make and 
substantial in material. The Mail girls laughed at their “ oid- 
fashioned " cut, and when their mother admired the durability of 
their stuff, they told her that nobody wanted clothes which would 
last so long that they would look as if they came out of the ark be- 
fore they were worn out. They suggested sundry changes which 
migh be made— a slash here, or a frill there, but Mrs. Mail negatived 
them all, saying that the Branders would like Kirsty best just as she 
was —she knew the ways of the gentry — the girl could smarten up 
afterward. They asked Kirsty about her occupations ana com- 
panions in Shetland, laughed at her -description of her wheel and 
carders, in which it struck Kirsty that they were at one with Mr. 
Brander. She ingenuously showed them the picture Tom had given 
her. They had a great many questions to ask about “ this Tom 
Ollison ” as they called him, soon picking up his name from Kirsty 's 
simple remarks, and making her fresh cheeks tingle with shyness at 
their hints that very likely he was in love with her. Then they 
showed her their own treasures— the valentines they had received 
last spring — the remains of their last winter’s finery, gewgaws and 
ruffies, which quite put the Lerwick trumperies to shame. The 
mother got tired at jast of what she aptly called their “fooling,” 
and proposed that they should all retire to rest. “ Keither of them 
was very ready to get up of a morning.” So she and Jane retired 
to the inner room, leaving Kirsty to share Hannah's couch in the 
kitchen. 


28 


AT AXY COST. 


Tired as slie was, Kirsty was too excited to sleep, and Hannah 
seemed ready to talk till morning. Didn’t she just wish that Kirsty 
would stay with them and go to work daily with her, instead of go- 
ing off and be shut up in a kitchen! She thought she and Kirsty 
would get on capitally together— she did not always hit it off with 
Jane. Jane preached too much to her. Jane did not stay at home 
with her mother, or help in the house any more than she did. Jane 
was as fond of going about as ever she was, only she went about in 
her own way— a very slow way, it seemed to Hannah, who wanted 
something more stirring than the singing classes, and reciting parties, 
and temperance evenings, and tea fights, which took Jane out nearly 
every evening. Hannah liked a rattling good dance; she knew of 
many nice quiet places which were hired by people caring to get up 
little balis. What was the harm of it? She -was not one of those 
who think themselves better than other people. How she would 
like to take Kirsty to the play! or even to a music hall! wouldn’t she 
open her eyes at the songs and the acting? What was life without 
a bit of fun? It was bad enough to have to work hard all day, 
■without having nothing nice at the end of it! Did Kirsty ask 
whether there was not something to be done at home? What was 
there to do? What was the use of darning stockings when you could 
buy such cheap ones that you could afford to wear them straight 
out till they would not hang together any more? What was the 
good of making one’s own clotiies, when a girl with a sewing- 
machine could make them up “ stylish,” for next to nothing? There 
■was not much washing. They used paper collars and made-up 
frilling, and ■what there was, mother did, as also the house-cleaning 
and the cooking. That sort of work was just fit for old women, 
whose day was over and who could not enjoy themselves. It would 
be a pretty thing to shut up a girl to do it. A girl must make hay 
while the sun shines. 

Jane had had a young man, but they had quarreled. Hannah 
would not wonder if Jane ended as an old maid— wouldn’t it be 
awful? She' had no fear for herself, she giggled, though she’d 
quarreled with two or three young men already — there were always 
as good fish in the sea as came out. She did not think she’d quarrel 
with her present beau: he dressed so nicely, quite like a gentleman. 
She was not sure what he was — in some agency business, she 
thought. He was so very gentlemanlike and well-spoken, that, as he 
never mentioned his people, she could not help thinking that pei- 
haps he belonged lo some grandees; she had heard stories of lords 
disguising themselves out of love for poor girls. She knew one or 
two of those stories were quite true— and what had happened once 
might happen again. The other girls were awfully jealous about 
him, and sometimes said the sort of things girls do say when they 
are jealous, just to make her miserable; but she did not care, not 
she! What was Kirsty asking about -wages? Hannah got about 
nine shillings a week, all the year around, and Jane perhaps eleven. 
They each paid their mother four shillings and sixpence a week for 
their board— that was all. They had the rest to themselves for dress 
and little expenses. They could not save any. If one took to sav- 
ing while one was young, when was one to enjoy one’s self? The 
young men could not save much either. They always paid all ex- 


AT ANY COST, 


29 


penses when they treated the girls to dances, picnics and such like. 
What did they do when they wanted to marry? Oh, there were 
plenty of people who would let you have furniture on tick just as 
the tally-man would let 3 r ou have clothes. Then you’d begin to save 
if you could. And if you couldn’t manage to pay up for it, then the 
furniture was just taken away from you, and you had to get on the 
best way you could. Of course, the fun was all over when you got 
married, so it did not matter so much. What a queer girl Kirsty 
must be to take such long looks ahead! They gave Hannah the 
dumps. She never- thought about anything, except whether she 
was enjoying herself to-day. It was^often hard enough to manage 
that. Her young man said this was the true philosophy — yes, he 
was. very well educated, but she could generally understand the 
words he used. Oh, Hannah did wish that Kirsty was to stay in 
Edinburgh, though she couldn’t help envying her going to London; 
and if one was to go to service at all, it was certainly better to go 
into a big house with plenty of service, such as the JBranders’ was 
sure to be, than to some quiet place, all by one’s self, where the 
mistress would have nothing to do but to watch one; whereas, with 
the other sort one might get some fun; and London people found it 
sohaid to obtain servants that they did not keep too tight a rein 
over them. And then Hannah’s voice began to grow muffled and 
her sentences incoherent, and at last both the girls slept. 

Kirsty did indeed find that “ a strong, willing girl from the coun- 
try ” was no drug in the labor market of a capital city. Before the 
next day was over she had had the offer of another service, in the 
house of a working watch-maker, a Swiss Protestant, married to a 
Scotch wife. The family lived in rooms over the shop, and consisted 
of the father and mother and three daughters, one of whom had 
been tiained to help her father, another was a teacher, and the third 
assisted in the household duties. They asked no skilled service, only 
health, strength, and willingness to learn, and they offered a wage 
of eight pounds yearly. Mrs. Mail replied that 44 her niece was as 
good""as engaged in the house of a real gentleman, where she 
wouldn’t get less than twelve pounds a year,” and when Kirsty was 
inclined timidly to suggest that the Branders were under no pledge 
of taking her (for the girl had felt attracted to the kind face of the 
watch-maker’s wife and the bright manner of her daughter), Mrs. 
Mail tartly told her to trust her for knowing what was what. Hid 
Kirsty wish to be a mere drudge, on a paltry pittance, when she 
might have light work, more money, more freedom, and plenty of 
presents and perquisites? — this being the ideal of life in Mrs. Mail’s 
eyes. 

However, the watch-maker’s offer was made to do service, when 
the aunt and niece waited on Mrs. Brander. When that lady offered 
to take Kirsty into her service as “ under-housemaid ” at ten pounds 
a year, Mrs. Mail demurred on the score that Kirsty had “ had as 
good an offer without going so far from her own people,” and that 
the only reason for this not being accepted was Mrs. Mail’s deter- 
mination ” to have nothing to sav to nobody else, if Mrs. Brander 
would like to hire the girl,” and also Kirsty’s owm alleged wish “ to 
be in a real lady's house, where she would learn how things ought 
to be.” Kirsty sat aside, mute and astonished, but gradually got 


30 


AT Am? COST: 


into the spirit of a bargain which she found eventually secured her 
twelve pounds a year, and liei washing put out, Mrs. Brander con- 
ceding these advantages the more easily that Mrs. Mail readily as- 
sured her that Kirsty would require no “evening out” and no 
monthly holiday. 

“ You won’t know anybody in London at first, Kirsty,” said her 
aunt, as they trudged home together, after the engagement had been 
made, “ and when yqu’ve been in the family a while you’ll be able 
to make your own terms. You must look out for yourself, and see 
that you get your rights. But, there’s a great deal to be done by 
good management . ’ ’ 

Kirsty was quite familiar with St. Paul’s injunctions to servants, 
“To be obedient to your masters according to the flesh, with fear 
and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ, not with 
eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing 
the will of God from the heart; with good-will doing service as to 
the Lord and not to men; knowing that whatsoever good thing any 
man doetli, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be 
bond or free.” 

But poor Kirsty felt that she had come. into an atmosphere where 
these principles “ would not work.” That was a phrase with which 
Mrs. Mail and her daughters had already disposed of sundry 
“ ideas ” which Kirsty had timidly put forward. And it never 
occurred to Kirsty that it these principles were steadily set to work, 
even in one lonely heart and one quiet lite, then they might effect a 
change in the surrounding atmosphere. Alas! was it likely tins 
should occur to her when it occurs to so few of us? For, is it not 
straige, yet true, that, in a land where the New Testament is 
held as the sacred book, any beautiful dream of human progress, or 
any sweet hope of real human brotherhood, or any revelation of true 
human dignit} r , is still called socialism, or communism, or anything 
but what it really is— not perhaps in its wild, unpruned tendrils, 
but at its living root — to wit, simple Christianity? Can it be that 
this is so, because by naming it under these aliases, people who say 
their creed every Sunday, can still boldly declare that “ it will not 
work.” 

CHAPTER Y. 
penman’s row. 

Tiie two youths, Robert Sinclair and Tom Ollison, arrived in 
London in the early morning hours. As their train had sped on- 
ward through miles and miles of outlying suburbs, densely built 
and evidently densely populated, they had wondered when it would 
stop, and Tom had highly amused their fellow -passengers by his 
native remarks on the scenes they were passing through. Robert 
had preserved a discreet silence; his ambition being to speak and act 
only as other people did, and above all, to sedulously conceal that 
the experiences of his past life had been such as to render anything 
here novel and astonishing to him.- Most singular is that craving of 
some human beings for a deadly uniformity. One shudders to 
think to what it may bring the world, as modern science annihilates 


AT ANY COST 


31 


time and space, and draws remote, places and people near together. 
For this craving in individuals “ to be like ” other people culminates 
in a base national instinct which readily exchanges ancient customs 
and national costumes, tor the “ etiquette of good society” and 
“ the latest fashion,” which pulls down historic houses that a grand 
promenade shall not swerve one foot from its hard, straight line, 
and forgets its antique prophets and patriots, hid with God in the 
mists of His glory, that it may dance round biuite-faced idols made 
of gold filched from its own folljM But then the world is God’s 
world, and while we have to do our best for it, it is in His charge, 
and we must be “ careful for nothing.” For at the right time, He 
sent the Persian hordes to shatter the Grecian palace of selfish art, 
and again. He sent the Roman legions to overthrow the Jewish tem- 
ple of spiritual pride, and again, He sent forth the Northern barbar- 
ians to batter down the Roman fortress of cruel power, and each 
time, as the wave of human folly and greed was beaten back by the 
breath of His human hurricanes, the human race itself was found 
higher and higher on the shores of His providence. And God has 
untold resources yet, foi the deliverance of man from others, and 
from himself. For He will not iest as the creator of molluscs, the 
ruler ot slaves, or the artificer of automata. He must be the Father 
of living children, who must each bear his own name, and have his 
own place. 

Does this seem a wide digression from a railway carriage, wherein 
one boy frankly compares what he knows already, with wbat be is 
learning, so that his words refresh the worn souls of the city folks 
who hear them, as the north winds and dancing waves of which he 
speaks would refresh their worn bodies; while another lad sits 
silent, or answers curtly “yes” and “no,” lest his kindly inter- 
rogators should discover that he had lived hitherto in a four-roomed 
house, where only peats were burned for fuel, and even refuses to 
cry out in admiration and wonder at the rich English woodlands, 
and gay English gardens, because he does not choose to admit that 
he never saw such things before? 

It may be a digression, but only such a digression as it is, from 
tiny seeds, about "to bo dropped into the earth, to thickets of well- 
grown trees which are what shall be their result in after years. For 
nations are made ot men who have all been boys in their day. And 
what the future thickets shall be will depend on what those seeds 
are, whether upas or eucalyptus? And what the boys are, that will 
the nation become. 

When the train came to a standstill, the pair had to part at once. 
Robert Sinclair’s railway journeying was not ended yet, though he 
and his “ traps ” would have to be conveyed quite across London to 
resume it from another station. For be was to be placed in the 
counting-house ot an old neighbor of bis mother’s pleasant girlhood 
— a Mr. Black, who owned a mill and a granary among her pas- 
sionately-remembered Surrey hills. 

Robert was not left to find his way alone from station to station. 
A countryfied-looking old laboring man pulled a dusty forelock in 
salutation of him, and offered to take him and his goods in immedi- 
ate charge. 

“ You’re Mr. Robert Sinclair, sir?” be said. 


32 


AT ANY COST, 


“ Yes, 1 am,” answered Robert, rather suspiciously. “ But how 
can you know me among all these people?” 

The old man smiled with sly humor. “ The others be all Lon- 
doners,” he answered, “and there’s no mistaking that you ain’t. 
(Little did he dream how he hurt Robert’s vanity!) An’ 1 saw your 
mother years ago. You’ve got hair like her, but 1 don’t think you 
take after her,” he added with a side glance at the lad. 

There was no such kindly convoy awaiting Tom Ollison. A 
sharp, lean London lad found ham out by mounting guard over the 
passengers’ luggage, and pouncing upon him when became to claim 
his box. Tom had not much farther to go, for his work and his 
home alike would lie in ihe heart of the city. He was to go into the 
bookselling business of an old friend of his father’s, one Peter San- 
dison, who had left “ the island ” many years before, and was quite 
forgotten by everybody there, except Mr. Ollison, with whom he had 
kept up a sparse and spasmodic correspondence, which had/ ad- 
mitted intervals of silence, sometimes lasting even for years. 

The Ollison letters which had gone to London had been homely, 
scrawling, not always well-spelled epistles, conveying new T s of mar- 
riage, and birth, and death, both on Clegga farm and in neighbor- 
ing households, their real geniality stiffly packed in the conventional 
phrases with which each had begun and ended. The Sandison let- 
ters which had gone to Shetland, had been prim and precise, sea 
soned with epigrams on politics and politicians, and occasionally 
with shrewd counsels concerning investments in government stock 
or railway scrip. Peter Sandison had never seemed to have any- 
thing to tell of himself — no tidings of marriage, or of household 
event. Perhaps an old bachelor can have no history. He had never 
even changed his place. In the house where he had gone as clerk 
and general factotum, he still lived as master, and there Tom was 
to live with him. How well Tom knew the address which he had 
so often seen in his father’s handwriting on the letters which he had 
posted for London—” 12 Penman Row, Barset’s Inn ’’—and how 
strange it was to think that was home now. No, no; Tom refused 
the thought. Home was nowhere but Clegga farm! 

Tom had never seen Peter Sandison, and would of course have 
said at once that he had no idea what he was like. And yet when 
Tom did see him, as he came to the shop-door, when the cab drew 
up, he felt instantly that he had had a preconceived idea which the 
sight of Mr. Sandison shattered forever, fie was a lean man, with 
high, rather fine features, and an uncertain complexion. His 
clothes were of the shabbiest, his long hair waved wildly, and he 
held out a bony hand to Tom. He smiled, too, but the smile lin- 
gered on his lips: it did not mount to his eyes. 

He seemed a man of few words. With a single brief inquiry 
after his old friend, Tom’s father, he turned and led the boy into a 
room behind the shop, and inviting him rather by gesture than 
phrase to partake of a meal set forth on the table, left him there, 
and returned among his book-shelves. 

* Tom had no reason to complain of the preparation which had been 
made for him. To his simple and limited island taste, the rich 
cocoa, the cold roast, the crisp rolls, and above all the plate of fresh 
fruit, seemed positively luxurious, and he certainly did justice to 


AT AHY COST: 


33 


them all. When the edge was taken from liis vigorous young ap- 
petite, he had time to look about him. He found himself in a small 
but rather lofty room, ill-lit, though that side opening toward the 
shop was entirely of glass, in small, quaint panes, the lower of 
which were screened by green blinds. The room had another win- 
dow awkwardly set in a corner, from which Tom looked out upon a 
narrow flagged yard, surrounded by lofty buildings. The general 
gloom of the apartment was increased by the darkness of its w T alls 
and even of its ceiling, which, instead of being whitewashed, was 
papered with a pattern of full blown roses tumbling out of cornu- 
copias, the whole brought to a fine fruity brown hue, by much 
smoke, many washings and sundry coats of varnish. But the gloom 
did not yet oppress Tom Ollison, accustomed to the dark coziness of 
Clegga, whose few tiny windows were all either skylights, or set 
low upon the floor. The furniture was in keeping witlT the apart 
rcent. A small round table on which Tom’s lunch had been served 
stood in its center, a small square table, with folding flaps, stood 
against one wall ; there were a few common cane chairs, a big brown 
press, and a quaint mirror with a beetling frame, made in three 
divisions, two of which were filled with glass which darkened an y 
visage which might be reflest^d therein; the floor was covered with 
llie commonest drugget; there was not a single ornament or super- 
fluous article in the room, except a splendid dark Tabby cat, curled 
in luxurious slumber on an old coat thrown across one of the shabby 
chairs. 

There was nothing iD all this to detain Tom’s curiosity long. So 
presently he rose softly, and went into the shop. Mr. Sandison was 
behind the counter, bending low over a desk, and he seemed to see 
and hear nothing till Tom said> 

“ Is there any thing I can begin to do, sir?” 

He looked up with a start and a frown, but said, “ Good! That’s 
it i You needn’t begin to day, though. Take a bit of pleasure 
first.” 

“ I’d rather take it second, sir,” Tom answered with a shy smile, 
“I’ll enjoy it more.” 

Mr. Sandison’s gray eyes flashed at him beneath their shaggy 
brows. “Good!” he' sai d, again. “Always do what; you like. 
Then one person at least is pleased. Self-interest is the only princi - 
ple by which the world can go on.” 

Tom felt puzzled. He had never before heard such sentiments, 
candidly expressed, though, for all his simple-hearted geniality he 
was acute enough to recognize that they formed the secret creed ac- 
cording to which many act. But how cbuld he reconcile Mr. Sandi- 
son’s words with what his father had told him, namely, that the 
only terms on which the bookseller would consent to train him were 
of so liberal a kind, that Tom’s utmost diligence and vigilance could 
scarcely make the contract fair? Tom looked up at his master with a 
half laugh, expecting that some turn of his lip or twinkle in his eye 
would belie his cynical utterance and reveal that it had been made 
only in jest. But Mr. Sandison’s visage was sober and serious, 
almost saturnine. 

lie took Tom at his word, and set him a task of comparing the 
contents of two catalogues of different dates, which kept the lad 

8 


84 


AT AKY COST. 


hard at work for three hours. Then he bade him return to the back 
parlor, and “see it he could find anything more to eat/’ This 
time, Tom caught a glimpse of a domestic, an old woman, who 
spoke sharply and in inconsequent answer to one or two civil re- 
marks on which Tom ventured. It was not till afterward that he 
discovered she was quite deaf. 

Mr, Sandison told Tom he did not want him anymore in the shop 
that night; he could go out for a walk if he liked. Tom said he 
would rather go to his own room and unpack. He had such a curi- 
ous feeling ot having lost his identity, that he wanted to re-assure 
himself by the sight, of his little belongings. As he crept up the 
dark narrow staircase, past the closed doors of silent rooms, it was 
really hard to believe he was in the same world with crazy, cozy 
old Clegga, interpenetrated bj^ the warmth of the great kitchen, and 
by the cheerful voices of those gathered about it. 

He could not help wondering to what other use the lower rooms 
were devoted, that he had to pass over two flats and go on to the 
attic floor. He was rather glad of it, however; the big low room, 
with its sloping corners, was a little more in the style of Clegga 
than were the rest of his new surroundings. The association was 
carried out by the rude simplicity of the furniture, by an old 
maimed spinning-wheel which stood at rest in one corner, and by 
the pictures on the walls, an old print of “ Shetland Shelties,” an 
engraving of a scene from “The Pirate,” and a fresh photograph of 
the Skerries lighthouse. Tom thought that Mr. Sandison had kept 
very true to the associations of. his early youth, and he rather won- 
dered how he had brought a spinning-wheel to the south with him, 
since Tom knew that he had migrated from the island, a lonely lad 
like himself. How could Tom" imagine that the old print and the 
new photograph and even the decrepit wheel, were all the pur- 
chases of the last few daj^s, made in preparation for his own arrival, 
because the grim bookseller had remembered how the sight of a pair 
of “ rivlins ” (or Shetland skin-shoes) and of a knitting-pin sheath, 
exposed on a stall at a fancy fair as “ articles of interestfrom Ultima 
Thule,” had refreshed his own home-sick heart years and years be- 
fore, and had opened up a store of innocent memories which had di- 
verted him from accepting an invitation to a gaming-table. 

“ Let us give everybody every chance we have had ourselves,” Mr. 
Sandison had said to himself, as he had put up the wheel and hung 
the pictures. “ Though it’s ten chances to one if they take it. 1 
believe it's these dumb preachers that do halt of the good— it’s little 
enough th^t gets done in the world, and they are in no danger of 
glorifying themselves!” 

Tom grew less bewildered, but far more pathetic, after he had 
opened his boxes and sorted out his possessions. There were no 
traces of mother or sister among them — no supererogatory stitching — 
no quaint personal plan, none of those tender little daintinesses 
which lads, in mingled pride and shamefacedness, scarcely know 
whether to display "or to hide. For Tom’s mother was in her grave 
in a wild Shetland burying-ground, and his only sister, the eldest of 
the Ollison family, had been married and away from her home for 
years. It seems singular how often the bliss of these close, natural 
ties is not enjoyed to the fullest by those who seem best able to ap- 


AT AHY COST. 


35 


predate them, but who are left to sow broadcast those seeds of love 
which others plant in their own gardens /or their own ingathering. 
God must know why it is, and must have a purpose in it. Is not the 
whole world the Father's garden, and is not the sole object of the 
children’s inclosed plots to train them to work on His wider plan? 
Are not fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters given us only 
to teach us how, as St. Paul beautifully expresses it, to treat all elders 
as fathers and mothers, all men as brethren, all women as sisters? 
And who shall say that those who can only sow in their Father’s 
larger garden shall not surely reap in their father’s longer day? 

Such relics of home and homely affection as Tom could boast of, 
he spread out tenderly. The stout leather -bound Bible, his lather’s 
gift, was laid on his toilet-table, and Tom looked reverently at the 
stiff inscription which had been so laboriously written on its fly-leaf, 
and thought of the love and goodness that was in it, and not of the 
final “ e ” that was omitted from the adjective by “ his affectionate 
father.” He hung up the comb and brush-bag, which the servant 
lass had made and given him, and did not scoff at its gaudy chintz, 
bright with red, green, and yellow. Perhaps a soft moisture dimmed 
his blue eyes when he found, nestled away among his new stock of 
island hosiery, a goodly 'bag of sweeties secretly stowed there by his 
father’s old housekeeper. He took one or two instantly, just be- 
cause he felt that the worthy dame had so stored them for his solace 
in his first, loneliness; but he put the rest away in his drawer. They 
were the essence of home, and must be consumed but slowly, like 
the last precious luxuries of an Arctic voyager. 

In due time he heard the heavy clanging of a bell, and, although 
he had not been warned to expect such a summons, he thought he 
had better go down and see if he was wanted. He found Mr, San- 
dison and the old servant, whom her master called “ Grace,” both in 
the little parlor, which looked less cheerless now the lamp was lit. 
Some frugal refreshments, a jug of milk, and a few biscuits, were 
set forth upon the table. Thereon, also, lay an open family Bible, 
before which Mr. Sandison sat. The old woman looked over his 
shoulder as she passed him, found a place in a small Bible which 
she carried, and then plumped herself down with a peculiar empha- 
sis on a chair in a corner, and gave a significant sniff. Each time 
Tom had seen her there had been something in her gait which made 
him feel .uncomfortable, as if he had somehow unconsciously 
offended her. 

Mr. Sandison spoke, looking straight before him, and not seeming 
to address either of his auditors. 

“ This was the habit in Shetland,” he said. “ It is ill to break 
old habits till one has better new ones. Let us read the thirteenth 
chapter of the Book of Proverbs.” 

It struck Tom that this was the thirteenth day of the month. Mr. 
Sandison lead in alow, even, not unmusical voice; ic might have 
been the voice of a much younger and very different man from the 
gaunt, taciturn old bachelor. He made no comment on what he 
read, but he lingered over some verses, and paused after them, as if 
repeating them to himself. Just as he had completed the last there 
came a rap on the shop-door — the shop was closed now— and Mr. 
Sandison shut the Bible, rose, and went out himself to see what was 


36 


AT ANY COST. 


wanted. The old servant rose, too, with another warlike sniff, She 
chose to see something wrong with the arrangements on the supper 
table, and lingered to readjust them. Then she looked up at Tom, 
with angry eyes, and pointing to the Bible, said harshly : 

“ What’s the good of him doing that when he doesn’t believe in 
it a bit? The master doesn’t believe in a God.” 

“ Does he say so?” poor Tom ventured to ask, much shocked, but 
especially sorry, and still oblivious to the fact that he was addressing 
a deaf woman. 

She knew that Tom had spoken, though only an inarticulate 
sound reached her. She never owned she w r as deaf; she much pre- 
ferred to be thought rude or disagreeable. So she hazarded no an- 
swer beyond another hostile grunt, and presently went on to say: 

“ You’d better beware of the master's queer ideas yourself, young 
man. There’s no knowing what they may lead you into. I’ll go 
bail there’s something in his own life that accounts for his holding 
’em. There’s them that don’t choose to believe in a God because it 
don’t suit ’em to think of His judgments. Look there!” She 
seized the big Bible with no very tender hands, and turned to its 
front fly-leaves. There were two or three of them, evidently made 
in provision for a family register, and very pathetic to see in the old 
bachelor’s Bible. 

Old Grace came round the table to Tom, pushing the heavy book 
before her with an air of biting triumph. 

“Look here!” she repeated. “D’ye see that? There’s two 
leaves fastened up together — fastened so tightly that they’d never be 
separated without spoiling the book; but you can just see there’s 
papers between ’em. 1 reckon that’s the master’s secret, and that it 
ain’t to his credit, though, mayhap, he’s got some reason of his own 
for wanting it found out after he’s gone himself gn’ is done with, as 
he thinks. 1 saw him the other dayVreadinga book which said our 
bodies don’t go into dust at all, but into gases. 1 shouldn’t be sur- 
prised if the master’s got a wife and children living somewhere. 1 
reckon he’s had his wild times before now. When a man doesn’t 
believe in a God, nor the judgment-day, nor Jiell, there’s a reason 
for it, so you look after yourself, my lad; and, mind, I’ve done my 
duty by you and given you warning.” 

As Tom went through the shop to the staircase he passed his mas- 
ter, once more bending over his books. Tom thought he might have 
easily heard all that Grace had said in her unmodulated tones, Yet, 
perhaps, he was too absorbed, for even Tom’s footsteps did not make 
him look up. But as Tom went by, and said softly, “ Good-night, 
sir,” he lifted sad, searching eyes to the bright young face, and let 
them gaze on it before he held out his hand, and answered kindly, 

“ Good-night, my lad.” 

Those sad, searching eyes seemed to follow Tom into the lonely 
darkness ot the silent house. He was glad to find himself in his own 
room. Strange as it was, it had already become a retreat and refuge. 

Tom had read and heard of people who were said not to believe 
in God. He had thought of such as quite apart from human sym- 
pathy. But, then, he had never seen one. 

“ Q our Father!” said poor Tom, “bless father and the folks at 
home, and keep me straight in all these new ways You have set me; 


AT ANY COST. 


37 


and is it not a dreadful pity if Mr. Sandison cannot believe in You? 
How sorry You must be! But, then. You know You’ll take care ot 
hi In, just as parents do of children who are a little wrong in their 
heads. 1 don’t think I ever loved my father so much as when 1 got 
better from the fever, and found liow he had sat and watched and 
nursed me while 1 was so delirious that 1 called him a bear coming 
to eat me up, and even tried to strike him.” 

Tom went to sleep, soothed and comforted. He had not been 
quite unimpeachable in his knowledge of “ The Catechism, with 
Proofs.” He had been addicted to sit beside his father on Sunday 
afternoons, gazing dreamily over Clegga Bay, talking of simple mat- 
ters, which often led back to the dead mother and to “ sacred j 
thoughts ot the heart,” rather than to attend the minister’s somewhat [ 
theological Sabbath class. Perhaps those very talks with the good I 
old father had led Tom to a truer feeling about prayer than too 
many have. To Tom prayer was “ talking with God”— trying to 
enter into Ilis will and His purpose. It was not mere begging from 
God. Tom had made few requests to his earthly father. He had 
been able to trust him to give what was best for his son. His own 
desire had rather been that “ father would tell him what he ought 
to do.” 

If all prayer took this form there would be little cavil over the 
power of prayer. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY. 

Two or three days later brought a note from Robert Sinclair to 
Tom Ollison. It was a short epistle, containing little more than an 
invitation for Tom to journey down to the Surrey village on Ckrist- 
mas-evc, and remain there till Boxing-day, so that he and his Shet- 
land schoolfellow might spend together the first festive season hap- 
pening in their absence from home. The proviso was added, In 
the event of there being no circumstance which might make it dis- 
courteous for Tom on such an occasion to leave the household 
where he was himself a member.” The invitation, couched in these 
terms, was sent through Robert by the miller and his wife, Mr, and 
Mrs. Black. Robert emphasized this by quotation-commas, and set 
forth his own sense of the supererogation of its politeness and con- 
sideration, by appending to it a dozen lively notes of exclamation ! 

By the time this invitation arrived, Tom Ollison had learned 
much about the surroundings ot his life from the old servant Grace. 
He had also discovered her infirmity of deafness, and had found 
how impossible it was to interrupt her harsh monologues, by ques- 
tions which might have drawn forth, however reluctantly, qualify- 
ing answers. Among other things he had been informed that his 
master had never been away lrom home tor the last ten years, and 
for how much longer Grace could not say— that being the time 
when she took service with Mr. Sandison. She had also told him 
“ that Sunday and Saturday were all the same in that house, so faf 
as the master was concerned ; she shop shutters were up, of course, 
and Mr, Sandison might go out a bit, but not tit church-time,” 


38 


AT AXY COST. 


Tom had so far verified her words. He had seen very little of his 
master on the day of rest ; they had their meals together, and Mr. 
Sandison told him all the books were at his service." Tom noticed, 
however, that nothing cooked appeared on the table, except the hot 
water for tea. Grace’s duties were never oppressive; but on Sunday 
they they were a sinecure. Tom had gone alone to the big parish 
church, venturing shyly into its cavernous shadows, out of which, 
as his eyes grew accustomed to them, there loomed a vision of 
crimson velvet and dusty carving, tesselated pavement, and monu- 
mental skulls and cross-bones — a mingling of the gloomy solemnity 
of a mausoleum with the cold state of a public palace, but with 
very little of the cheery welcome of the father’s house. The beau- 
tiful service of the English Church was strange to Tom, who could 
understand so little of the intoning of a very indifferent choir that 
he could scarcely follow the order in his prayer-book. So he had 
sat and thought of the little church of Scantness, which bad been so 
like his own home; its rudely flagged floor, bare benches, and big 
stove seeming but a dignified version of Clegga Farm set in simple 
order for the higher occasions of its master. And his heart had 
sickened with a strange sinking which he could not quite under- 
stand, for, like most fortunate stay-at-home folk, he had hitherto 
thought of “ home-sickness ” rather as a half -fanciful name for a 
half-fanciful sentiment, and had never dreamed that it can be a 
suffering so real, as in some rare cases even to sap away life itself. 

Grace had further told him that “ they didn’t keep Christmas, ” 
and Tom’s only comfort had been that the day of the English 
festivity would not be imbittered by the thought of genial merri- 
ment. going on at Clegga (though he knew he would be missed), 
because, in the northern isles, Christmas is kept a few days later, 
according to the old style of reckoning. At any rate he could be 
quite sure he was not disgracing his master’s hospitality by absent- 
ing himself on the occasion. Grace had told him with bitter tri- 
umph, as if here, at least, was one habit which she could admire 
and uphold in him of whom she had such a generally low opinion, 
that “ they had no bothering nonsense ot Christmas dinner— noth- 
ing at all to make the day different from other days, only that every 
Christmas-eve somebody always sent her a parcel containing a 
dress or a shawl. There was no name with it. But she reckoned 
there were one or two people in the world who knew well her value, 
though, may be, they hadn’t known it in time, and perhaps their 
conscience gave them a prick, or perhaps they thought such a man 
as Peter Sandison was not likly to be too liberal in his wages— not 
that she complained ; she knew her infirmities, and that the weak 
must expect to be put upon.” 

Tom felt quite surprised at himself for the longing he experienced 
to accept this invitation, because it gave him a chance of seeing 
Robert’s familiar face; for young Sinclair and he, though always 
friendly, had not been special friends in Shetland ; but now Tom 
could enter into that sick yearning after somebody with a few com- 
mon interests and mutual memories which often binds the exile or 
the aged with ties which seem most inexplicable and uncongenial to 
those who are not in their pathetic secret. 

Tom was half afraid to prefer his request for leave of absence to 


AT AtfY COST. 


89 


his taciturn master, who seemed in his own experience to have 
proved the common relaxations ot humanity to be unnecessary. 
Poor Tom was but an inexperienced lad, not yet initiated into the 
world’s strange “ rules of contrary,” whereby it is the rich man 
■who thinks that the poor should be poorer still, and the idle man 
who considers that the busy do not work half enough; for seldom it 
is that the “ easy-going ” make lite easy for those about them. 

“Sir,” said Tom, timidly addressing Mr. Sandison, “my old 
school -fellow, Robert Sinclair, has written to me inviting me to 
spend Christmas in the country with him.” 

Mr. Sandison looked up suddenly, and did not speak for a mo- 
ment. He even looked down again and resumed his writing before 
he replied. 

“Go, by all means; 1 think the weather will be good for the 
season ot the year.” 

“ Thank you very much,” Tom replied not so much relieved as 
he might have been by the permission, because he thought a shadow 
had darkened on Mr. Sandison’s face. He lingered, as if in hopes 
of another encouraging word. 

“ Go, by all means,” repeated the bookseller. His tone was less 
frigid this time, but he did not lift his eyes from his ledger, and 
Tom had to be satisfied. 

Tom bought Christmas cards for his father, and for every servant 
on Clegga Farm. Then he bethought him that as he was to spend 
Christmas with Robert, it would be a kindly attention to send one 
to Mrs. Sinclair at Quodda schoolhouse, and, instead of buying a 
fourpenny one for her, bought two .at twopence a piece, and in- 
closed the other for Olive Sinclair. He had never seen much of 
Olive — had only spoken to her once or twice, and remembered her 
only as a gaunt, black-eyed girl, who answered in monosyllables. 
But he thought how much she must miss her brother! His little 
purchases, postage stamps and all, did not exceed half a crown, for 
he had the truly gentle sense that the value of such tokens of re- 
membrance is not their cost but their kindliness. This was the first 
money he had laid out in London. And let any who are inclined 
to sneer at the boyish extravagance, and to suggest that he had 
better have opened an account w 7 ith a savings bank, give a thought 
to a certain box of ointment, which was once poured forth, and to 
the rebuke which was administered to those who Caviled at it. The 
best investment ot money is in human joy. Tom’s half-crown cer- 
tainly gave much pleasure ot the simplest and purest kind to eight 
or nine people. Yet it gave one little pang, too, and that was to 
none other than Mrs. Sinclair. She never found it words; she 
strove to keep it from crystallizing into a thought. But that was 
the only card from tne South which arrived at Quodda, and there 
was no other letter by the same post. Oh! how wicked she was to 
give a half-reproachful thought to Robert. Why should he waste 
his money on such things? the love which was between them had 
no need for such trifles! And yet — ! But she would never, never 
have thought of any omission if it had not been for this token from 
a mere neighbor. She almost wished it had not come! She gave it 
to Olive to keep, and somehow after she did that, Olive took her 


40 


AT AHY COST, 


own card down from the mantel-shelf where she had set it, and put 
them both away — out of sight. 

The shop in Penman’s Row was closed on Christmas-eve, at the 
earlier hour on which it was closed on Saturdays. Mr. Sandison 
inquired by what train Tom ought to travel, and bade him take 
care and get off in good time. This sounded kindly, but Tom still 
thought there seemed a constraint in his manner. He was making 
arrangements tor shutting up, as Tom prepared to go. How could 
the lad wish “a merry Christmas” to the saturnine man, whose 
ionely plans he knew so well? And yet he could not go in silence. 
There was something in the bookseller’s sad eyes which drew Tom 
toward him, despite all old Grace’s hints and warnings. 

“ Good-by, sir,” said the lad, and the other words came as by a 
happy inspiration. “Thank you for your kindness to me, and 1 
wish you all good Christmas wishes.” 

A porter entered the shop and threw down on the counter a big 
parcel for “ Mrs. Grace Ailan ” just as Tom passed out. 1 he book- 
seller followed the lad to the door and stood looking after him as he 
went down the street. 

“ 1 thought 1 was only thinking of the boy in what 1 meant to 
do,” he murmured inaudibly, “ but 1 find I was like all the rest of 
them, only thinking to please myself, for when I find he can please 
himself better than 1 could please him, then 1 am displeased! Well, 
well, it sha’n’t be wasted. If one could only be as sure that some- 
body gains by every loss!”— and he sighed heavily. 

That night, a poor, well-meaning, but shiftless family, of the 
name of Shand, living in a court opening off Penman’s Row, heard 
a ring at the door bell, and on answering it found a hamper of 
Christmas dainties standing on the door step, superscribed with 
their name. 


CHAPTER VIT- 
OLD-FASHIONED WAYS. 

Theue had been a light fall of snow during the forenoon of 
Christmas-eve, and when Tom Ollison met Robert Sinclair on the 
platform of the little Surrey railway station, and turned with him 
down the road toward the village of Blockley, he seemed to himself 
to have arrived in fairyland! He did not know what to admire 
most, the broad smooth roads, with liberal grass borders, flanked by 
beechen hedges whose red winter leaves fairly glowed in the last 
warm rays of the setting sun, or the thickets of trees, the evergreen 
wealth of giant pines and stately firs serving to bring out the delicate 
tracery of the bare boughs of oak and elm, or again, the houses - 
dotted here and there, some small, some roomy, a few new, but 
mostly old, all with their thatched eaves or red tiles and the inde- 
scribable hues of moss and creeper— only adding to tlie charm of 
the landscape while giving it human interest. Tom could not find 
fitting words for his admiration, or tor the thoughts it awoke in 
him, though perhaps their drift may be gathered from his first ex- 
clamation. 

44 1 wonder how the people who are bom here, can ever bear to go 
away!” _ 


AT ASTY COST* 


41 


“ I don’t know about that!” said Robert, “ for, of course 1 wasn’t 
born here. But 1 know 1 should be glad enough to get away. It 
isn’t a place to get on in!” 

‘‘Everybody seems very comfortable and well oft,” remarked 
Tom, glancing to the right and to the left, at the cottages they were 
passing, whose muslin-curtained windows and trim interiors, as 
visible through casually open doors, represented to him the utmost 
of prettiness and comfort. 

“ Ah, but you don’t know how little many of these people have 
to live on; not more than they get with us in Shetland— ay, less, for 
there’s nothing here to bring in luck, as the fishings sometimes do,” 
persisted Robert. 

“ They have very pretty houses,” said Tom; “ and what a beauti- 
ful country it is!” he added, throwing a wider glance- around, over 
the stubble fields and quiet woodlands, to the horizon of low hills, 
purple against the evening sky, wherein the bright vermilion was 
fast fading into cool yellow light, softening oft through fairy green 
into placid gray. 

“ One can’t live on beauty,” returned Robert, oracularly. “ But 
the people here have no ambition; they only want things to be as 
1 hey have always been. Many of the families have, lived in the 
same places, following the same callings, for many generations. It’s 
not at all uncommon.” 

“ Well, I don’t see any particular advantage in change — unless it 
is change for the better,” said Tom. 

“ Mr. Black is only the second of that name at the mill,” went 
on Robert; ‘‘ but that’s only because his father married into it. 
His mother was an Alwin, and the Alwins have been the millers at 
Stockley since the year one. It's a Saxon name, they say. I sup- 
pose the first Alwin came over in one of the early invasions, and 
planted himself down within as short a walk of the sea-coast as he 
could. It’s a wonder he had the enterprise to get to England at 
all.” 

“ 1 don’t know that a man need lack enterprise, because when he 
comes to a place which he likes he has the good sense to stop there,” 
observed Tom. 

” Well, I am sure Mr. Black hasn’t any enterprise,” Robert re- 
plied in an aggrieved tone, as if Tom was defending somebody who 
had injured him. ‘‘ He says he doesn’t see what a man wants with 
more money than is enough to live on himself, and to leave his 
place open and in order for those who are to come after him.” 

Tom thought over this statement in silence. It seemed to him a 
very reasonable one, almost like the discovery of a first principle of 
true ambition. But it occurred to him presently that it might be 
made so subtly to change and enlarge itself as soon to lose all its 
original meaning. “ What is enough for a man to live on?” is a 
question which cannot be answered except one knows what a man 
means by “ life;” whether he requires only to support his body, as 
many are driven to do, or also to nourish his mind and develop his 
moral nature, which is the true thrift for nations and individuals; 
or, on the other hand, to stunt and starve his morals and mind, and 
to pamper his appetite, which work of explosive destruction can 
never be done to perfection without the expenditure ot a large fort- 


42 


AT ANY COST. 


une. Does a man want to “ live ” in affluence and beneficence on 
bis paternal farm, or to “ see life ” in metropolitan boulevards and 
continental spas? Tom Ollison knew little of these things, but 
great questions condense themselves for simple minds— and he re- 
membered that he had heard his father say that little Clegga farm 
was prosperously upheld on a less income than served to maintain a 
certain half -pay captain and his wife, who lived in furnished rooms 
in Lerwick, drank the best brandy, and paid enormous usury on 
money borrowed to clear off the further end of a tail of debt which 
their career dragged after it. So Tom could see clearly that this 
declaration that a man wants only* enough to live on, at once in- 
volves the inquiry, “ How does a man mean to live?” 
i ”1 shall get away from here as soon as I can get a chance,” de- 
cided Robert. 

“ 1 would not be in too great a hurry,” said Tom; “ one never sees 
the best of anything at first.” 

“ Oh, don’t you think so?” asked Robert. ”1 do. Novelty 
itself is always a charm.” 

Tom was silent. For at that moment despile his appreciation of 
the rich beauty around, his heart craved for the open sea, and the 
bare rocks of Scantness! And it seemed to him to have been almost 
like treachery to those old haunts to have said that surely those born 
among such loveliness as this would never care to leave it! Ah, 
those wild and sterile places, like strong and stormy characters', often 
win the mo$t clinging love, only made the more tender because it 
deprecates the neglect or contempt of an unappreciative world! 
Tom waited for the pang to pass, and then said humbly: 

” 1 always think we like things better as we grow used to them. 
One works best with tools to which one is accustomed.” 

”1 don’t want to grow used to Stockley,” returned Robert. 
“ Perhaps 1 might get mossed over like the rest of the Stockleyites, 
if 1 stayed long enough— though 1 scarcely think so. Rut that is 
precisely what 1 don’t mean to do. There will be plenty ready to 
jump into my shoes here, but 1 slia’n’t mind that, if 1 get a chance 
of giving them up of my own accord. The old folks have got no 
children, and I have an idea that 1 might step into the mill in time, 
if 1 chose. But what is it worth, if"T do? If 1 can’t do a great 
deal better than that, well, 1 don’t think much of myself, that’s all.” 

‘‘ Where was the house w r here your mother was bom?” asked 
Tom. 

“ Oh, it is none of these,” Robert answered hastily. “ It is at the 
other end of the village. We sha’n’t pass it.” 

Its tiny proportions did not suit his pride. He wished it had been 
left in his imagination, and determined to leave it in Tom’s. It 
would be time enough to be frank about the poverty and lowliness 
of one's family when they would serve only as foils to one’s own 
riches and grandeur. They might tell against one before. 

To the end of his life, Tom Ollison never forgot the scene which 
lay before him, as they turned a corner of the road and came round 
upon Stockley Mill. The business premises, a picturesque con- 
glomeration of brown timber, gray stone, and red brick-work, with 
a background of tali pines, stood on that side of the mill-stream 
which was accessible from the high-road. Across the stream was 


A? ANY COST< 


43 


thrown a wooden bridge, wide enough for a chaise, .or similar mod- 
est vehicle, hut which had evidently been constructed with little 
view to any carriage traffic whatever. On that side of the watei 
there was only a footway, flanked by the beechen hedge which Tom 
had seen everywhere in the neighborhood, and which, besides con- 
tributing the beauty of its exquisite color to the somber winter land- 
scape, served, by its quality of retaining its withered leaves until its 
spring glory was grown, as a perennial screen to the garden behind 
it. It was only as the lads advanced across the bridge, that a gate- 
way set in the hedge opposite it gave a view of the miller’s habitation 
— a long, low house, so green with ivy that for the fiist moment the 
unaccustomed Tom could not be quite sure where the walls ended 
and the shrubberies began. The last light of the setting sun was 
strong upon the mill, but the home was in deep shadow outside, for 
within a glowing fire was evidently newly stirred, and quaint shadows 
could be seen waving up and down the parlor wall. 

Robert opened the gate and let Tom pass in. The garden was in 
its winter undress, yet Tom made a quick note of its sleek lawn, 
its numerous flower-beds, its ancient dial and its thatched summer- 
house. But the gate had clanged behind them and given warning 
of their approach, so before he had time to utter one note of admira- 
tion, a tall female figure enveloped in a scarlet shawl appeared in 
the porch and claimed all his attention. Be did not need to be told 
she was Mrs. Black. There is something very amiss in the hospi- 
tality of any house, whose mistress needs an introduction in that 
character. 

Had Tom himself been an old friend of the family, he could not 
have found a more hearty welcome. Robert secretly thought that 
the Blacks must be very desirous of making themselves agreeable 
to him, to be so zealously friendly to his visitor; perhaps they thought 
he was not very highly satisfied with his position — indeed he had 
given them some reason to think so. Little could he dream that 
while he and Tom were absent from the parlor, during the early 
hours of Tom’s visit, Mrs. Black had said to her husband: 

“ What a fine open face that youth has! 1 wish we had got this 
one instead of the other for our inmate!'’ 

Whereupon Mr, Black had replied, with that resignation of nature 
for which Robert contemned him: 

“ We must take things as they are sent to us. You get number 
one before you get number two, you know, Bessie.” 

“ You get number one very much indeed when you get Robert 
Sinclair,” the wife had answered, with her clear merry laugh. 

“ What a woman you are, with your quick likes and dislikes!” 
said her husband, looking at her fondly. ‘‘If our own children 
were with us, I believe you’d have your favorites.” 

A swift shadow passed over Mrs. Black’s blight face. Three little 
ones had lain in the cradle in that nest of a home, only to be carried 
out and planted in God’s acre. And Mrs. Black’s delicate conscience 
always smote her that one of these had bee% mourned beyond the 
others. Neighbors would have said that she had been stricken 
almost into her own grave by grief for each fading babe. But she 
herself knew that there was a difference: that she had never known 
the bitterness of death till she saw hej one boy in his coffin. People 


44 


AT AHY COST, 


had said to her since, that it might be as well when the only son 
was taken; she might have spoiled him in her loving pride; but she 
knew better; she could have allowed herself to be very angry with 
him, she was sure. She might lather have spoiled the girls, feeling 
that their brother had defrauded them of a bit of their mother’s 
heart. Her husband’s chance words smote a tender place. 

“ Well,” she said, “ 1 do wish 1 liked that Robert Sinclair bet- 
ter, and then I’d give him many a good lecture. He’s had a right to 
two or three already. There’s no knowing how much good they 
might have done him. Everybody has a right to ail his rights.” 

The bountiful table to which Tom found himself invited seemed 
a type of things in general at Stockiey. Its viands were not rich or 
rare, they were only abundant and perfect in their kind; and Tom 
could not help casting admiring eyes on the silvery damask, to 
which an occasional dainty darn only gave the dignity of antiquity. 
He saw that the heavy old cut-glass was brought forth from closets 
crammed with the same. The low brown walls of the parlor were 
well-nigh covered with dim engravings, at many of which collectors 
would have looked with some interest. If there were a few family 
portraits in oil which were not altogether works of art or beauty, 
at least they made manifest that the'past generations of Blacks and 
Alwins had been well-fed, well-clad, kindly-faced people. There 
were corner-cupboards with quaintly framed glass doors, and other 
cupboards set into the wall with no doors at all, on whose shelves 
were stored quantities of old china arranged with less reference to 
prettiness, interest, or value than to personal associations, delicate 
Oriental bowls alternating with coarse English pottery. ’ In sundry 
coiners there were little tables, covered with hyacinth bulbs and 
fragile ferns, which “ the mistress ” was fostering. In one window 
stood a cage with canaries, and in the other one with doves. On the 
hearth-rug was a ‘beautiful beagle, watching with pathetic eyes over 
two roly-poly pups. From a shady corner in the little entry came 
a weird laugh, which made Tom look around staitled, to the general 
amusement. The laugh came from a roomy wooden cage, whose 
inhabitant, a waggish-looking starling, charmed with his success at 
directing attention to himself, gladly "repeated his performance. 

The table was attended by a comely damsel, who looked the more 
like a garden flower that her gown was green and cap ribbons pink. 
From time to time she whispered announcements to her mistress, to 
wnich Mrs. ’Black evidently responded as soon as the meal was 
over, by gathering her shawl about her and leaving the apartment. 
Her husband explained that “ the mistress had gone to see after her 
Christmas gifts— the folks wouldn’t take it kindly if she didn't give 
them a word as well.” Presently the scuffle of departing footsteps 
and a few muffled, but cheery, whispers announced that the recipi- 
ents were going away well pleased. Mrs. Black came back with 
the light of the smiles and thanks she had evoked shining inker own 
face, 

“ There never was such a place for gifts as Stockley,” remarked 
Robert. “ I do believe^o much giving has pauperized the people.” 

“ It is not giving that makes paupers,” said Mrs Black quickly. 
“ It is giving without personal acquaintance and liking which does 
that. Gifts come quite natural between friends, be" they rich or 


AT AKY COST. 


45 


poor. Why should it pauperize Goody Blake if 1 give her a shawl 
and a pound of tea any more than it would pauperize you, Roberta 
if 1 gave you a book?” 

$he stopped abruptly. She saw that the merry twinkle in hei 
husband’s eye was asking wlietner there would be much personal 
liking on her side in any gift she might bestow on Robert, 

“ I don’t think it’s good for people to be so much taken care of/’ 
said the youth, “ It would be better for them to take care of them- 
selves. 1 believe in self-help.” 

“ For babies?” questioned Mrs. Black. “ Nearly every one of us 
is in some respects a baby as compared ^itli somebody else. When 
Martha or me w T ant to move the big chests on the landings, we 
shouldn’t like it much if Stack said he believed in self-help, and left 
us to take care of ourselves.” 

Martha was the comely servant and Stack was the stout miller’s 

man. 

“ Stack is paid to work, and it is his interest to do whatever you 
ask him,” said Robert Sinclair, “ But 1 don’t believe in the kind 
of spirit there is down here, everywhere. What is the good of the 
cottagers having votes? They all vote with the squire — their votes 
are only so many more for him.” 

“ Well,” returned Mrs. Black, “ they know the squire, and they 
know he’s a just man and a perfect gentleman, and they reckon, 
rightly enough, that he knows more of parliament business and par- 
liament men than they do, and they’d rather follow him than go 
astray. They know the squire’s advice is good on matters they do 
understand, so why shouldn’t they take it where they are not quite 
so clear? I know the squire has never asked a vote.” 

“ He needn’t ask them, ma’am,” said Robert with a superior smile. 
“ He knows be has them without offering that handle to bis adver- 
saries. It’s a terrible power for a man to have.” 

“ It’s a good power in a good man’s bands,” persisted Mrs. Black, 
whose husband watched the argument with contented pleasure; 
“ and the minute it gets into a bad man’s hands it begins to shake. 
A bad man can’t influence people without words and threats, or 
bribes, and then that which is best in people goes against him, and 
only tlie weak and mean are on bis side. 1 know power does not 
go from rulers the moment they begin to misuse it, but it begins to 
go then, though it may seem to increase. Moths don’t destroy a 
good garment in a week, but they make sure work of it/’ 

“ It seems ridiculous to me to see grown-up people made babies 
of,” said Robert. “Think, Tom, the squire’s sister thought the 
snowy lanes would look prettier with some bright colors moving 
about. So last year, on iNew Year’s Day, she gave all her pension- 
ers, the old women and the little girls, scarlet cloaks. 1 think that 
was rather too much, even for their meekness! They wear them as 
little as they can. The hoys call the girls ‘ Madam’s robin red- 
backs.’ ” 

Mrs. Black laughed “ Well,” she said, “ 1 wouldn’t have done 
just so. I’d have given something plain and useful, and would 
have put the colored cloth into the clothing club, to be bought out, 
and would have worn something scarlet myself to set the fashion. 
But the squire’s sister means well. There’s no denying the red 


AT AKY COST, 


46 

pretty in winter time.” She twitched -her own shawl. “ 1 got this 
to keep the dear old goodies in countenance,” she explained to Tom, 
“ and now 1 would not exchange it for any duller color. 1 told them 
all that if they'd heeded their Bibles they needn’t have waited tor 
the squire’s sister to teach them what the wise woman knew in Solo* 
mon’s time.” 

“ It seems to me there is a great deal too much of the squire’s sis- 
ter and the squire,” said Robert. The Blacks had apparently en- 
couraged him to speak his mind freely, and he saw no reason to sup- 
press his adverse opinions. “ Nobody can build a house without the 
squire seeing the plans.” 

“ That ended in keeping a second public house with a strange mas- 
ter out of Sfockley,” put in Mrs. Black. “ The Old Red Lion is 
quite enough for the place, and its host knows his guests, and begins 
his wisdom where theirs leaves off.” 

“ It’s a terrible power for one man to have,” persised Robert. 
Tom Ollison gave liis head an inscrutable little shake. Mr. Black 
spoke at last, and what he said, was: 

“You can’t get power belter placed than with a good man. You 
may make the best o’ laws, and the best o’ organizations; but it all 
comes down to the man at last. If he’s good, they’ll do, and if he 
ain’t, they won’t. And if lie’s good and they’re bad, they won’t 
matter much; and he’s bad and they’re good, they won’t be much 
account.” 

“ Then what’s to be done if the man is bad?” said Robert. 

Mr. Black gave a quiet chuckle. “ We must take care that he 
isn’t,” he answered. “Each man has got to look after one man, 
and that’s himself.” 

“ That’s exactly what 1 say!” exclaimed Robert, while Tom re- 
membered that cynical utterance of Mr. Saudison’s which had so 
puzzled him on his arrival in Penman’s Row. 

“ Take care you’re not misunderstood, John” warned Mrs. Black. 

“ Each man has got to look after his own duties and other folk’s 
rights,” said the good miller, “ and after lie’s done that, honest, for 
a little while, he’ll find the two fit like hand and glove. And now 
hark to the waits! I’ve heard ’em every Christmas -eve o’ my life. 
W e stick to the old hymns o’ these festivals, though we try a new 
one sometimes, in the choir o’ Sundays. There’s a time for bringing 
in new things, and a time for keeping up old ones; and I remember 
a veirse my father used to repeat: 

“ Let us see the old faces 
Beam in the old places, 

Let us taste the old dishes 
And wish the old wishes., 

Let us sing the old songs 
And forget the old wrongs. 

Let us toast the old glories 
And tell the old stories, 

For half o’ the pleasure o’ all Christmas days 
Is in regular keeping to good old ways I” 


AT AJSfY COST. 


47 


CHAPTER VI1L 

A QUEER MAN. 

Tom Ollison found his two days’ visit to Stockley Mill all too 
short for the wonders and delights of the quiet, deeply-stored, old- 
world life, which seemed to him rather fresh than new, because he 
had known it before in story and poem. He seemed almost to have 
lived before through that Christmas morn, when the household from 
the mill walked over the snow, gleaming in the sunshine, to the little 
ivy-covered church. Surely the rich glow of the old painted win- 
dows was not something he had never seen before! And the voices 
of the choir and the school-children singing, “ O come, all ye faith- 
ful/* came to him like an echo from a dream. And when the sim- 
ple service was over, and after the silent prayer which follows the 
benediction, as the little congregation stood up in obeisance to the 
squire as he passed down the aisle, Robert Sinclair kept his seat, but 
Tom Ollison stood up with the rest, and did not feel the less, but 
the more of a man for doing so. For the stately, white-haired old 
gentleman was clearly “ a father in Israel,” an aristocrat, “ one of 
the best,” as the dictionaries tell us. And as Tom glanced round the 
cicrowd, where the very poorest looked comfortable and well-cared 
for, and as he thought of the scores of happy homes outside, he re- 
flected that much that he saw must be due to the just and gentle rule 
of the Manor House, and that a reverent and kindly courtesy was as 
due from these people to this worthy successor of worthy sires as it 
is from children to a parent, and that any guest should join in the 
good customs of a community as he would in those of a household. 

The squire had nods and smiles for all around, but he also had 
friendly words for the aged, tbtf infirm, and the widow, and little p 
caresses for the widow’s children, which left something solid in the ’ 
little hands after he had drawn his own away. 

“ The worst of it is, that the squire hasn’t a son to come after 
him,” Mrs. Black had told Tom, as they walked home. “ When 
he dies the estate will go to a distant kinsman, whom none of us 
know. When the squire was young he fell in love with a poor earl’s 
daughter, and she liked him, and her folks were pleased, knowing 
his family was older than hers, and thinking that Stockley Hall 
would be an honorable quiet down-sitting for her. But she’d lived 
on the edge of the Court, poor thing, and had got a hankering after 
the extravagance and gayety she couldn’t rightly share in, because 
the earl was so short o’ money. And there came by a rich iron- 
master— it was just when railroads w T ere doing their best or their 
worst in the country — who could have bought up Stockley with 
little more than one year’s income. And the iron-master fancied 
her ladyship, and she threw over the squire, and took him! And 
the squire never looked at anybody in that wav since. I’ve heard 
say that some have asked him whether it wasn’t the duty of one in 
his place to marry and keep up the old line; but that he made an 
swer, that was the squire’s duty, but the man’s duty came first, and 
that was to marry nc woman unless he loved hei/’ 


48 


AT ANY COST 


“ I only wonder he’d ever cared for such as that lady must have 
been,” rejoined Tom, the rash and inexperienced. “ She must have 
been a mean, low-minded sort.” 

Mrs. Black gave a superior smile. 44 All! there’s mysteries in fall- 
ing in love,” she said. “ Them that lias done it wisest will always 
tell you it wasn’t of their own guidance. It all comes from above. 
‘ A prudent wife is from the Lord ’— His' best blessing to a man. 
But His next best is to keep away an imprudent one, and that’s wliat 
a vain, foolish woman always is.” 

44 But this lady seemed to know how r to look after money,” said 
Tom, “ and * prudence ’ sounds as if it meant that.” 

Mrs. Black laughed. “ That’s what the parson said one Sunday,” 
she replied. 44 He said exactly that— that people thought prudence 
meant looking after money; and that their idea of looking after 
money was getting it to spend on one’s self, or to keep to please 
one’s self. ‘Whereas,’ said parson, 4 prudence means providence, 
or foreseeing, looking after the real things that we really want— love, 
and wisdom, and true comfoit, and tr} r ing to secure them for as 
many as we can.’ I’ve always remembered what parson said about 
that* because I’d been feeling after it in my own mind, and it w r as 
like suddenly hearing a tune that has been running in one’s head, 
but that one couldn’t quite catch.” 

“ It’s the sight o’ parson and o 1 his own ways that’s kept me in 
mind o’ those words,” said Mr. Black. 44 When you’ve got a pretty 
picture it’s well to have a sound wall to hang it on. There’s the 
parsonage, young gentleman,” and the good miller pointed to a long, 
low cottage standing in a bowery garden, not unlike his own home 
at the mill. 44 If you want to know what is in a shilling, and what 
can be made to come out of a shilling, don’t goto the poorest folk i’ 
Stockley; go there.” 

Tom eagerly drank in all the homely wisdom. The good seed 
fell on ground prepared for it. Nq^v everybody should be always 
prepared to sow, because nobody knows where good ground maybe. 
Sometimes there are a few inches of it in midst of a morass cr in the 
cleft of a rock. But God’s field of the world needs all sorts of agri- 
cultural labor besides sowing. It has good ground which must be 
broken up by steady discipline, ground which must be manured by 
heavy experiences, ground which must be altered by the bitter chem- 
istry of loss and remorse. 

Robert Sinclair walked beside the Blacks, and hearing them “ go 
off,” as he put it to himself, 44 into their usual chatter,” relapsed 
into a train of thought of his own — a calculation as to the sum which 
would be produced by a certain rate of interest on a certain sum of 
money in a given term of years. 

Let not those who speak wisely lay too much unction to their 
souls! If they do see of the fruit of their lips, let them remember 
that there must have been as much wisdom in the ears that heard as 
in the tongue which uttered. 44 As an ear-ring of gold, and an or- 
nament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear.” 
But if the ear-ring falls into the gutter, it will only be trodden 
under foot. 

And then the pleasant visit was over. Mrs. Black herself stepped 
down to the railway station with Robert Sinclair to see the young 


AT ANY COST; 


49 


guest away. Stockley people were never afraid of seeming too civil 
or too kind. And just at the last minute Stack, the miller’s man, ap- 
peared, carrying a big hamper to be stowed under Tom's seat in the 
train, Mrs. Black vouchsafing no explanation except that “ nobody 
should ever come into the country without carrying a bit of it back 
to the town.” And Tom was whirled off, nodding back to her wav- 
ing handkerchief; and somehow father and Clegga Farm did not 
seem quite so far away, now he had made friends with these kind 
people nearer at hand. 

Very dark and dismal looked the London streets as Tom wended 
his way through them toward Penman’s How. And yet, so inscrut- 
able is the human heart! Tom felt that this temporary going away 
from it had m’ade the dull old house there seem more home- like. It 
had certainly flashed into Tom’s mind when Robert expressed his 
determination to leave the mill, that this might give him a chance 
of quitting the gloomy shop and its not very congenial labors, and 
of taking Robert’s vacated place, But the thought had only come 
to be dismissed. Peter Sandison was his father’s friend, who had 
made generous terms with him for his father’s sake. And Peter 
Sandison looked at him with sad eyes. And it was said that Peter 
Sandison did not believe in God! Strange reasons these for loyalty 
and love! But then loyalty and love so often grow best from no 
reason — which means generally but reason too deep for words, or 
even tor defined thought. 

Our lives are never fairly poised or truly rich, unless there is some- 
thing outside oui own orbit which we can love and enjoy without 
coveting to possess. What would the earth be without the sun- 
beams? But what would happen to the earth if it at once rushed 
oft to join the sun? Tom felt that Penman’s Row should be cheer- 
ful enough when one’s work was there, and while one had memo- 
ries of Clegga and thoughts of Stockley to carry with one into it. 
The gloom and the perpetually shifting crowd of strange faces had 
already ceased to oppress the soul of this son of the rocks and the 
sea. They began to stimulate his imagination, suggesting to him 
that human life could overmatch nature in every mood and aspect. 

Mr. Sandison met Tom with a smile and a kindly word. He 
looked happier than he had done on Christmas-eve, so that Tom 
hoped that he had enjoyed himself .after his own fashion. It was 
not for the youth to guess or to fathom that the dreariness of his 
master’s lonely wandering among the holiday crowds, his aimless 
watching of happy gioups, had merely ended in a sad thankfulness 
that another Christmas of his allotted number had gone by! 

Early in his dismal Christmas stroll, Mr. Sandison had come in 
front of an open door, over which was painted, “ Refuge for desti- 
tute strangers.” Saying to himself that the omission of the descrip- 
tive adjective would have spared paint, politeness, and pain, he yet 
went in, half out of curiosity, and half out of a strange yearning 
both tow ai dr those who needed such help and those who rendered it. 
A Christmas breakfast had been given, and when Mr. Sandison en- 
tered between the delivery of little addresses, ladies and gentlemen 
were moving to and fro amid the pathetic crowd. The bookseller 
quietly ranged himself among the battered women and broken men, 
whe were accepting precept and exhortation with all the meekness 


so 


AT A HY COST* 


with which the defeated are expected to take whatever the victors 
give. His own shabby, carelessly-used coat easily seemed the thread- 
bare garment ot a decent poverty, and there was scarcely a visage 
there more rugged and worn than his. A dressy little woman, wear- 
ing more ornaments and fal-de-rals about her than she could have 
decently sported in a drawing-room, and flaunting them in the face 
of those monuments of human misery, “ because the poor don’t like 
you to come among them shabby, you know,” fussed up to the new 
arrival. She had whispered to a friend that this looked “ an inter- 
esting case,” one of the sort that might figure in a paragraph on 
“ University men to be found in the kitchens of common lodging- 
houses.” Her little figure stood beside Mr. Sandison’s gaunt dig- 
nity, like a gayly painted shanty under the gray wall of a noble 
ruin. She gave a perky little cough, and opened her mission. 

“ Is it not very nice for you to have a room like this to come to?” 
she said. “ Don’t you think it is very kind of all these dear people 
to leave their own beautiful homes to come here to welcome you just 
like friends? Is it not something to be very thankful for?” 

“ Madam,” replied Mr. Sandison with a melancholy humor, “ in 
my old-fashioned school of manners, the guests gave the hosts vol- 
untary thanks: the hosts did not suggest them. But it; is some 
years since 1 have mingled in any society, and ways seem changed.” 

The lady did not quite understand him. She only knew that she 
did not get the gush of gratitude which she expected, and she was 
in a measure disconcerted. “ I’m afraid you have not had a very 
happy life, poor man,” she remarked, and there was at least as 
much blame as pity in her tone. 

“ Madam, 1 am quite sure of that,” said Mr. Sandison. 

“Is not that partly your own fault?” she inquired. “Do you 
love God? If you love Him you must be happ 3 r .” 

“ 1 want to find somebody who believes in Him,” answered Mr. 
Sandison. “ How can we love whom we do not know?” 

The lady thought she had got into an incident after her own heart. 
She fussed all over. She seemed no longer one woman, but rather 
twenty crowding round. 

“My dear man,” she cried, “surely you have found what you 
seek! We all believe in God here. Is not our love for our poor and 
afflicted brothers and sisters the best proof of our faith?” 

Mr. Sandison pointed grimly to the words above tne door. “ Is 
that what you call jrnur brothers and sisters?” he asked. “How 
can they be destitute if all your hearts are really full of love for 
them? Take out that word — that adjective, which must be bitterest 
to bear where it is truest. And what do you know ol me which 
gives you any right to think that you can exhort me? 1 am older 
than you by many years. You see that I am sad and careworn: 
you think me poor. All these points, madam, should on the face 
ot them rather invite you to ask to learn of me. You simply feel 
that you must be wiser than me because you believe yourself to be 
more fortunate and richer. Madam, wms Jesus Christ Himself fortu- 
nate and rich? If you saw Him to-day you would not call Him 
Master, you woull call Him a deslitute stranger, and ask Him to 
thank you for amusing yourself with feeding Him and preaching to 
Him.” 


AT AKY COST* 


51 

The lady shrunk back. Her small face grew pale. As Peter 
Sandison turned and strode from the room, she whispered, “ One oi 
those dreadful socialists, 1 do believe. *You cannot think what 
awful things he said! .He spoke quite coarsely. The more we do 
for these people, the more they hate us. The world is growing very 
wicked.” 

But when, after all was over, a paper was found in the plate in 
the lobby, on which was written, “ To be used for the refuge of my 
brothers and sisters whose names 1 do not know,” and in which 
were folded two sovereigns, then the lady remembered that a cer- 
tain radical and “peculiar” viscount was addicted to frequenting 
such assemblies in disguise. “ Dear man,” she sighed, “ he would 
be such a gain if we could bring him round altogether to our side— 
to the right side. He spoke so cleverly. I saw at once that there 
was something most remarkable about him. Those people can not 
disguise themselves, do whg,t they may. A practiced eye sees a 
subtle something!” 

What would she have done had she known that this was no vis- 
count, no out-at-elbows university man, not even an interesting and 
picturesque criminal, but just plain Peter Sandison, bookseller, of 
Penman’s Row! 

Later on, during Christmas-day, he had strayed into a church, 
and had sat down in a corner where the dust was thick upon the 
cushions, and damp and mildew had seized on the prayer-books, 
with names of dead people, and dates of forgotten anniversaries on 
their discolored fly-leaves. Peter Sandison had smiled a^weird smile 
when the preacher, a mild young man newly ordained, after dwell- 
ing on the blessings given to most at this season richly to enjoy, had 
gone on to speak of “ resignation,” and to suggest cheer for those 
whose joys were of the things gone past: “ Let them still thank God 
for those joys,” he had said; “ let them be content to wait without 
them for a while, measuring by their sw T eetest memory the joys 
which hope has in store.” And Mr. Sandison had wandered' out 
again— there had been no word for him. He did not know that he 
had been disappointed: he would have denied that he expected any- 
thing. 

When Tom came back from Stockley he carried his hamper into 
the parlor and asked Grace’s aid in unfastening it. The master 
seemed to suspect what was going forward, for he came in too. 

“ Won’t you invite me to see your gifts, Ollison?” he said. 

“ 1 didn’t think of troubling you, sir,” Tom answered, delighted. 

“ What’s the good of stuffing a basket with rubbish like this?” 
observed Grace, lifting out first some small holly boughs, rich with 
berries. But Mr. Sandison lifted them tenderly, as it he wouldn’t 
knock off a berry for the world, and— smelled them. 

“ La!— don’t you know they haven’t no scent?” snapped Grace. 

“They have a country freshness,” said Mr. Sandison, gravely, 
knowing that only Tom would hear his words. 

“ That’s more like the thing,” Grace went on, lifting out a plump 
pullet. “And here’s eggs; and here’s apples; and here’s a pot of 
jelly. These folks are a making up to you for something, Master 
Tom.” 

“ They are such good people,” remarked Tom to his master, urn 


at any cost. 


heeding the old woman's words, 44 and Stocldey is such a pretty 
place— oh! beautiful, one can scarcely believe in it/’ 

44 Don’t you wish tnat you and your Shetland comrade could ex- 
change?” asked Mr. Sandison coolly. 

“No,” said Tom, as honestly as stoutly, “ 1 like sticking to my 
own lot.” 

“ But if Stockley had been your lot you wouldn’t have wished to 
exchange it,” persisted the bookseller. 

“ No, sir, 1 shouldn’t,” Tom answered, “ and I’d have stayed at 
Clegga it 1 could— but 1 half think I’m glad 1 couldn’t; I’d never 
have known the best of Clegga if 1 hadn’t come away.” 

Mr. Sandison laughed, and then sighed. 

| Grace came back from storing the good things in her pantry. She 
now carried a parcel in her hand, and as she came in, Mr. Sandison 
rose and went out of the parlor into the shop. 

“ I’m going to show you the grand present 1 got this time,” said 
the old woman. ‘‘I come just as you went away.” She spread 
out a thick gray shawl, fine in texture, and delicate in hue. “ You 
see there’s somebody feels I’m worthy a good present,” she went on, 
“ though 1 believe the master thinks they must be fool3 for their 
pains, for he’ll hardly throw a look at it. But it’s odd how every- 
thing gets taken advantage of, and put to bad purposes in this world.. 
Of course it has got talked about, how I’ve had these beautiful 
things sent to me by somebody unbeknown. Indeed, I’ve told many 
of the young hussies round that it was a good lesson to them, that 
if they did their duty it would get recognized somehow. An’ now 
them worthless Shands, in Penman’s Court, are making believe that 
the like lias happened to them! Set them up! I can see through it!” 

Grace was folding up her shawl with elaborate care while she 
talked. 

“ They just wanted some Christmas feasting,” she proceeded. 
44 And what with their perpetual poor mouth about misfortunes, and 
their debts and so forth, they thought it would not do to get some 
above-board. Indeed, I don’t know how they could get it honest — 
and lies come in particular handy to hide worse things!” 

“What can be worse than a lie?” asked Tom. But of course 
Grace did not hear. 

“ So they gave out that on Christmas-eve there was a ring at their 
bell, and when they went to the door, there was a basket there, with all 
sorts of good things in it — a turkey, and a plum-pudding, and six 
mince pies — and what; do you think? (that’s the way liars always 
overdo it!) a bottle of rich gravy to be heated and served with the 
bird! 4 There, that’ll do,’ said 1, when Mrs. Shand showed me 
that. 4 Gratitude,’ says I, 4 ought to be enough to season charity, 
without gravy,’ and on she went holding up a beautiful bag of 
ready-made stuffing as well. It made me sick to see her, it really 
did! As if anybody would go giving turkeys and gravy to poor 
miserable objects that haven’t, and never could have, no right to 
such things.” 

As Tom went off to his bed that night, he could not help wonder- 
ing who it was that so faithfully remembered Grace, and what she 
could have done to win their affection and respect. And then he 
remembered that God, who cares for everybody, reaches each by 


AT AXY COST. 


53 

some human hand, though it may give but a chill and clumsy touch. 
'‘We look at God through those wlif> love us,” he said to himself. 
“ 1 always see Him behind father, as it were. 1 wonder whether 
anybody will ever be able to see Him behind me?” 


CHAPTER IX. 

ME. SANDlSON'S QUESTION. 

It was not very long before Robert Sinclair received his eagerly 
expected invitation to ‘ r spend an evening” with the Branders. 
There was in it a clause directing him “ to bring his young Shetland 
friend with him.” But, in the meantime, Robert thought fit to 
ignore that clause. He could feel quite sure Mr. Brander had only 
put it in. as a matter of course — probably imagining that, the ‘two 
youths were living together, or, at all events, seeing each other every 
day. It was certainly very kind of Mr. Brander to invite him, 
thought Robert; it was quite supererogatory kindness that be should 
also invite Tom Oliison. It was not good’ policy to be very ready to 
force one’s friends upon those who might be willing, out of civility 
to one, to extend their hospitality to them. If he found that Mr. 
Branders proved the sincerity of his invitation to Tom by repeating 
it, then U would be time enough to take him, and he was sure it 
would be pleasanter for Tom not to be taken to a stranger’s house, 
until an old friend had a sure footing in it. 

But Robert was thrown into a little perplexity by the Branders’ 
invitation, which was given in the free-and-easy style of some 
'wealthy people who are quite above consideration of the limitations 
of train service and such like trifles. It was simply impossible that 
anybody limited to such arrangements could come in and out, from 
Stockley to Bays water, ‘‘to spend an evening.” If the Branders 
had been staying in such “ a corner ” they might have done it with 
their own carriage and horses, though they would probably have 
preferred to “ put up ” for the night at some London hotel. But 
Robert had no equipage, and to go to a hotel involved an outlay 
which made him reflect, though he decided that it must be made, 
rather than that such an invitation should be forfeited. He felt the 
Branders’ want of consideration almost like a compliment; it seemed 
as if they saw him on a level with themselves, and forgot that he 
had not all the same advantages. 

‘‘One can’t expect those who don’t have to trouble about such 
trifles to remember them foi others,” he decided. 

Still, he did shrink from hotel charges. If he had to pay them, 
he would have to withdraw from the savings-bank the trifle lie had 
already deposited there. To be sure, he argued, one saved that one 
might invest, and such an extravagance must be regarded in the light 
of an investment, for the favor of the Branders represented to him 
the road to fortune. But, still, would it not be possible to spare the 
savings for some other investment? For if be was to grow into inti- 
macy with the Branders, he would need many little things, for one 
must not parade poverty before rich people. Why should he not 
ask Tom Oliison to take him in for one night? This seemed to him 


54 


AT ANY COST, 


a liappy inspiration. He knew Tom had a room to himself, and 
that Mr. Sandison was a Shetland man, a bachelor, and one of 
whom Tom spoke kindly. His employer had already given Tom a 
pleasant holiday. Why should not Tom’s employer do him a favor? 
The favor was asked and readily granted, so readily and cheerfully 
that Robert, according to his nature, decided that the favor was all 
on his side, and “ that Mr. Sandison and Tom must be really glad 
of any change to enliven them.” The only person who did not seem 
delighted was Grace, who was not by nature an entertainer of 
strangers. One would have thought that she feared lest Robert 
might be deaf like herself, for she certainly wrote her grumpiness 
so plainly on her visage that nobody but- the blind could have 
doubted it. It had occurred to Robert that this arrangement of 
spending the night at Mr. Sandison ’s house might prove very con- 
venient and economical for him, during the several visits which be 
foresaw he was likely to pay to the Branders, before the happy con- 
summation of leaving Stockley altogether, toward which lie was 
steadily feeling his way. Grace’s sour face first suggested to him a 
possible check to this nice little plan. He judged that neither the 
master nor Tom would find it very pleasant to have him for a guest, 
if she set herself against him on the score of giving her extra 
trouble. So he made up his mind to fee Grace; it was economy to 
give her an occasional shilling, rather than to spend at least three or 
four shillings on “beds and breakfasts.” He rather thought that 
Giace would draw back from his offered bounty, and that even if 
she took it, he would scoie by it, and by bespeaking her good graces 
prevent any necessity for similar propitiation too often. But though 
Grace had really expected nothing, she was equal to the occasion, 
and to him. Her skinny fingers closed over the coin as if the 
douceur was a matter of course. She uttered no thanks, but looked 
at it in a way which made Robert feel that she thought it ought to 
have been half a crown. By that diplomacy, Grace secured a repeti- 
tion of the gift on each of Robert’s visits. She was as greedy of 
gain as he was, though her ambition was limited to a few pounds, 
while his imagination rose to thousands — sometimes of mere capital 
— but more and more often of income! 

Robert’s visits to the Branders and his thrifty retreat from their 
grandeur to Mr. Sandison’s homely hospitality were repeated several 
times, before he attained the desire of his heart and secured the 
offer of a seat in Mr. Brander’s office. Naturally the lads exchanged 
sundry confidences as they lay in the darkness of the wide attic, mio 
which a stray moonbeam might steal and illumine the old wheel, 
which Robert said ought without delay to be put to its best use, as 
firewood. Robert soon divined that the master of the house was 
“ queer;” indeed Grace seldom allowed anybody to have any doubts 
on that subject. Tom was led into a solemn whisper of her assertion 
that Mr. Sandison did not believe in God, and hoped for no here- 
after. Robert opined “ that such notions would do him no good in 
his business,” but conjectured that probably he did not mind that, 
since he was doubtless a miser and rich enough already, and would 
very likely leave Tom all his money if he did not oilend him. 

Then he proceeded to tell Tom, who lay dumbstruck, that after 
all, he believed he had found out that Mr. Brander was as glad to 


AT ANY COST. 


55 ' 


secure his seviees as he was to give them to him. Mr. Brander was 
evidently getting tired of over -application to the details of his busi- 
ness, and he clearly had an aversion to taking a partner and a strong 
mistrust of his own bead clerk. Robert Sinclair could quite under- 
stand his having a desire to take up some young man, whom he 
could train into his own ways and from whom he need tear nothing 
for years, by which time he would have made their interests identi- 
cal. Robert Sinclair giggfed at that point and Tom Ollison felt 
utterly mystified. 

Robert went on to say that he thought there seemed to have been 
a marvelous intervention of Providence for the purpose of securing 
him a career and a fortune. He believed that under the circum- 
stances it was very advantageous to him to have come from Shetland 
—it gave the stockbroking office in the city a delicate aroma of that 
“ island of mine,’’ and of “ the castle on my estate,” of which' he 
had already shrewdly observed Mr. Brander liked to boast. Also, 
doubtless, Mr. Brander felt that his promotion of a young man from 
Shetland would make him popular there, and serve to facilitate his 
dealings with a primitive people, apt to distrust strangers, and to 
connect gentlemen dealing in finance with those “ lawyers ” whom 
they have held in abhorrence for all generations. 

And then Robert went on to talk about Etta Brander. She went 
much into society, he said. He heard she was out nearly every even- 
ing, either at a dance, a conversazione or a concert. But he noticed 
he was always invited when she was to be at home. He thought 
Mr. Brander was very fond of Etta. He should not wonder if the 
father would be very glad for his daughter to marry somebody who 
would be, so to say, in the family, and would have only mutual in- 
terests — always provided of course that he was in a position and had 
talents, suitable to the family and fit to promote its fortuues. It was 
strange — was it not?— and Robert gave another little laugh, how 
often the old stories made success run on these lines! Even 
Hogarth’s good apprentice marries his master's daughter. All that 
used to seem to him too much in the region of romance, unexpected, 
illogical, not to be looked for, but he saw now that it was in an 
almost inevitable sequence, not due to weak indulgence in foolish 
romance, rather perhaps to wise restraint from it. And there Robert 
actually sighed — having already adopted the singular affectation of 
offering one’s self a sacrifice to one’s own ambition and lust for 
“ getting on.” Well, Etta Brander was certainly a pretty girl — and 
he supposed she was clever— and the realities of life must always be 
considered, and one had one’s duty to them to carry out. 

And there Robert stopped short, checked by Tom’s dead silence. 
It only made him feel that he was making a fool of himself — that 
probabty Tom was quietly laughing at him as one “ who was 
counting his chickens before they were hatched.” He became sud- 
denly conscious that his strain of talk was weak and foolish, that it 
might even be bad policy. It w T as the last time for many years that 
Robert Sinclair was betrayed into such forecasting confidences. 

In reality, Tom was silent, not in mirth, but in misery. He did 
not think of Robert’s words in any special connection with Robert. 
They might be either true or false concerning Robert’s future, and 
yet there might be a truth in them very damaging to what had al- 


56 


AT ANY COST. 


ways seemed to Tom sucli a pretty ideal— the humble lad, heart- 
smitten by the maiden above him, silently doing his duty without 
any hope of her, till gradually duty brought him out beside love, on 
a level with her! Misty castles in the air had often risen on poor 
Tom’s own mind, all the more silvery and ethereal, perhaps, because 
there was no possibility of his putting an exact foundation under 
them. Sweet faces had glanc&l upon his vision from those wonder- 
ful surging waves of London life (from whence do glance some of 
the sweetest faces of the whole earth), and Tom had thought how 
would it have been if the dim silent old house in Penman’s Row had 
been lit by the good beauty of a daughter? He and she might have 
been such close friends; she might easily have liked him a little if 
her father praised him. And then perhaps some day when the 
master grew too old and tired for his work, and thought regretfully 
of leaving the old place, Tom might have asked eagerly, “ Why 
should not they all stay on together?” — and father, too, might have 
liked to come down fromClegga, and the two old friends and school- 
fellows could have smoked a quiet pipe together, and perhaps have 
made a little fun of the young people, with "their grand new theories, 
and their daily practice humbly halting after. Dreams! dreams! 
And in his own particular case", Tom Oilison had always known 
these were nothing more, for the house in Penman’s Row was a 
lovely one, and his father’s friend was a kinless man. But if there 
is something vexatious in having a night vision of angels and heaven- 
ly music and beauty dissected down into a nightmare remembrance 
of twelfth-day cakes and Christmas numbers, can there not rise an 
untold bitterness when youthful ideals of loving service and loving 
triumph are declared to be mere euphuisms for worldly prudence 
and success? Pool young people, who have not yet acted out their 
own little drama on the stage of life, are terribly susceptible to any 
whisper that life has no drama at all, but only a very cleverly man- 
aged marionette show. 

Robert had fairly left Stockley and had e\en been for many 
months in Mr. Brander’s office within a stone's throw of the Stock 
Exchange, before he saw lit to tell Tom that the stock-broker had 
been constantly asking when the other young Shetlander was com- 
ing to put his foot under the mahogany of iiis dining-room in Or- 
molu Square, Kensington. Tom was not very eager to accept the 
invitation. Perhaps he lacked a laudable desire to see society in all 
its phases; perhaps he believed in the quaint fable about flie danger 
of the golden jar and the china one floating too near each other: per- 
haps he was like that Shunamite woman who was so tamely content 
” to dwell among her own people. ” 

But when Mr. Sandison heard of the invitation, he bade Tom ac- 
cept it. 

“ Take a rich man’s kindness for what it is worth,” he said, in his 
grim way. “ He can’t go without half his crust that he may offer 
it to you, that is not in his power. But he does his little best when 
he orders another partridge for your pleasure.” 

Mr, Sandison had such slight delight in personal conversation that 
he had actually never heard the name of Robert Sinclair’s new friend 
and patron up to this point. Now Tom mentioned it casually. 

The master bent down lower over his desk and seemed so absorbed 


AT AHY COST, 


57 


in iiis papers that Tom did not think he was any longer interested in 
the matter. Suddenly, however, he looked up and said in his very 
harshest manner, 

“ Have these — Branders— any children?’ 7 

“ One,” answered Tom briefly. What could it be ip the dry man- 
ner of the old bachelor which made the hot blood tingle on the 
youth’s cheek. 

“ Son or daughter?” asked Mr. Sandisom 

“ One daughter,” Tom replied again. 

Mr. Sandison went on with his writing. And his thoughts were 
trite enough, for he only reflected that the world is a little place, 
and goes round, so that whomsoever we have met once, we may cer- 
tainly look to meet again, and that life is a history that repeats itself, 
so that as we turn and watch those who come after us, we are apt to 
see them fall into the same pits which waylaid ourselves, it is our 
business to cry out and warn them of their danger. Mr. Sandison 
knew that a word from him, hinting that this visit to the Branders 
had better not be made, would have been rather welcome to Tom 
than otherwise. But then, how can we be quite sure that there is 
still a pit at the same turning in life where there was one in our time? 
Alas, we cannot be quite sure, until we see the runner tumble in, and 
then our warning is too late! But if we cry out too soon, we may 
but turn him aside from a pit which has been filled in, and is now 
quite safe, and startle him on to some ground unknown to us, where 
there may be gins and traps we wot not of. A careful and thrifty 
youth may be developed into a miser by the warnings of a spend- 
thrift against the extravagance which ruined himself. A reserved 
nature may grow unsocial and self-righteous under the exhortations 
of the enthusiastic and warm-hearted who have suffered themselves 
to be easily misled by bad companions. It is an old truth, that our 
experience is for ourselves, we cannot teach it nor bequeath it. Fran- 
tic efforts to do either more often lead to harm than good. 

Yet the wisdom earned by past mistakes and sufferings is not 
wasted. What we are is the result of what we have been, and what 
we have done; and what we are will always tell as the most- power- 
ful warning and encouragement to those who follow. 

Mr, Sandison went on w r ith his writing, and held his peace a while 
longer. 

Had he any right to infer that what certain people were twenty 
years ago, they still remained? Was he himself the same man now 
that he had been then? And had he any just reason for judging that 
a child must resemble its parents? Had* he not sometimes, "in "bitter 
rebellion against the very doctrine, been ready to assert its flat op- 
posite? How was it that just now, when an ancient wrong was astir 
in his heart, it seemed so likely to be true? Oh! how often he himself 
had had to hear it! Might he not take his revenge on the world, 
and assert it this once? It would be but saying it once for a hun- 
dred times he had heard it, and in such a percentage as that it must 
surely be true! Besides, what was the use of setting his own private 
feeling against the wisdom of the world? The wisdom of the world 
had always triumphed over his feeling, why should he not let it 
have its way now, when it beat time with his own passionate bitter- 
ness? 


58 


AT ANY COST. 


No, never! Though the cruel law of hereditary bondage might be 
true in ninety -nine cases oat of a hundred, yet there was his own 
feeling against it, and that must count for something. If the inex- 
orable laws of the dumb universe do Dind iron chains about the race 
that struggles among them, that is enough; no need that humanity 
should add another link to its own fetters. 

In the white heat of a personal agony his own heart had beaten 
out a passionate protest against the heartless verdict of a heartless 
world. In a moment of suffering from an old personal wrong, 
should he throw down his own arms and snatch at the base weapon 
from which he had striven to defend himself? No; such was not 
even a meet opportunity for him to admit that the weapon might not 
be all base, that theie might be some temper in its metal. 

To honest hearts, that which they have condemned as a lie, is 
never so hateful as when it presents itself in their own interest. And 
yet there was a fiery indignation within him which would not keep 
wholly silent. Bitterness against his own enemies, against facts 
which had darkened his own life and wrecked his own faith, he 
could suppress, if he could not conquer. But he could not help 
saying : 

“ Go out into the world as much as you choose, Tom, only never 
care for anybody or trust anybody. Study your kind as you would 
the wild beasts at a show, and be good to them, only always feed 
them through the wires of a wise indifference. You may hold up 
flaming hoops for them to jump through if you like, then" they will 
fear and obey you: but don’t begin to caress them, unless you do so 
as an experiment in getting bitten. So much for the world of 
“ affairs,” as the French chll it. As for the social world, when you 
go there take a mosquito-net as part of your outfit. And remember 
it is the female insects who sting.” 

Tom said not a word in answer to this tirade. It did not make 
him really think a whit less of humanity, as the perusal of some 
chatty newspaper articles, or the hearing of some playful semi-phil- 
anthropic speeches might have done. It only made him realize that 
there are terrible risks to be run on the field of human life, and that 
he need not be too sure of escaping where his father’s old friend had 
certainly received some deadly wounds. 

How much cynicism is the growth of individual pain! He who 
is too proud or too gentle to name or to wound his own foe is rather 
apt to curse or to lament on a grand scale. Woe be to those whose 
deeds turn their brethren into accusers of the world or of society, of 
their sex or of their rank! 

“ Y 7 ou had better have something to eat before you go to their 
grand late dinner,” said the bookseller, with a return to something 
like his ordinary manner. “ Y 7 ou remember what our chapter said 
last night, ‘ When thou sittest to eat with a ruler consider diligently 
what is before thee, and put a knife to thy throat it thou be a man 
given to appetite.’ It’s a mistake to want anything, or to seem to 
want it, in this world. But repose of manner and patience of mind 
are apt to depend a good deal on being somewhat satisfied before- 
hand.” 

Tom could feel clearly enough that his master’s words came from 


AT ANY COST. 59 

thoughts which were quite behind his little act of household consid- 
eration. 

There had been some friction earlier in that day in the household 
in Penman’s Row. Grace had detected the youthful London shop- 
boy in the act of pilfering from her larder, and Grace had been for 
sending off for the police, and giving the lad “a lesson/’ which 
might well leave him with no power to learn anything else but evil 
for the remainder of his days. Mr. Sandison had entirely vetoed this 
plan; he had had the boy into his counting-house, and had told him 
in a few simple words, that this sort of thing must be first punished, 
and must then cease. He had told him that his act was a shameful 
one, only that he was young and loolish, and that he had not got to 
be ashamed of it (the lad was trembling abjectly), so much as to take 
care that it, or anything of a similar kind, should never happen 
again, 

“ If I had had a son of my own he might have done the same, till 
he knew better/ * Mr. Sandison had said. “ And if he had done so 
1 must have punished him to make him know better, and to show 
him at once that evil must end in pain sooner or later. Then, and 
not before, I should have forgiven him, and then 1 should have 
trusted him again. So if 1 am to forgive you 1 must punish you. 
Tnerefore if you wish forgiveness you will ask me to cane you. 1 
give you ten "minutes to think about it/' 

The lad stood mule and shametaced for about two minutes. Then 
he went into the shop and brought back a cane, which he put into 
his master’s hand. Mr. Sandison shut the counting-house door upon 
them both. When the lad came out his face was pale and shining 

Grace was vexed. “Ho good would come of it,” she prophesied. 
“ Fred would only be more cunning in his dishonesty. She won- 
dered her master could soil his hands chastising such trash! It 
would serve him right if Fred turned on him, and brought some 
friend to say that he had been 'unlawfully assaulted and beaten. 
Only Fred had no friends, and what could one expect of the like o’ 
that? She had told the master from the first that there would be 
nothing but heartbreak in having one of those children about the 
place.” 

Grace could not hear, but she could see the interrogation on Tom’s 
face, as he said aside, half to himself, halt to Mr. Sandison: 

“ Those children! What on earth does she mean?” 

“ Why, didn’t you know Fred was an illegitimate child,” she 
snarled, ‘ ‘ a workhouse foundling, the very worst sort of a bad kind?” 

Tom reflected for a moment. He had learned terrible facts of hu- 
man life since he had lived in London. He had wondered sometimes 
how he could bear to go quietly to his peaceful bed while he knew 
of the tragedies and horrors being enacted wiihin a stone’s throw of 
Penman’s Row. 

“ Isn’t all that way of thinking awfully cruel?” he said to Mr. 
Sandison in a low voice. “ Is it not awfully unjust?" he added em- 
phatically, as if the sum of all evil was in that word. “ And how it 
seems wrought into public opinion, into its common phraseology 
even! Why should the very brand of shame be put on the one who 
did not win it for himself? Why should we say that such a one is 


60 


AT ANY COST. 

an illegitimate child? Should we not say rather that he had the 
misfortune to have illegitimate parents?” 

Mr. Sandison did not answer. Tom looked up, fearing that his 
plain speech had been somehow in fault. There was a strange ex- 
pression on the bookseller’s face, a curious, pained, half -smiled such 
as one might give who had so strained his vision in watching for 
something, that when it came in sight he could scarcely believe his 
eyes. 

“ Tom,” he said, slowly, “did your father ever tell you anything 
about me?” 

“ JSfo, sir,” answered Tom in some surprise, “ except what friends 
you both were,” he added ingenuously. 

“ Thank you, Tom,” said Mr. Sandison after a moment’s pause. 
“ Now go; it is time that you started for your visit to Ormolu 
Square. ’ ’ 

As Tom passed out of the house, after he had made his simple 
toilet, he saw his master standing at the dining-room window. He 
had opened it, and having collected a little handful of crumbs from 
the bread-basket, he was spreading these on the sill. There were a 
few sparrows who lived among the eaves of the dismal yard. 


CHAPTER X. 

IN ORMOLU SQUARE. 

Ormolu Square was a big block of pretentious buildings of the 
kind which at that time were being rapidly erected in what had 
hitherto been a quiet, old-world suburb. Since then, they have 
trampled it out of existence, nothing remaining now even to tell its 
story, save here and there, a rather dilapidated ornamental cottage, 
on which evidently nothing is spent for repairs, and which is only 
lingering on a respited existence till somebody comes of age. But 
at the time of Tom Ollison’s first visit to the Branders, the locality 
was still full of stately houses, mellowed by age, and set behind 
gardens as prim and as quaint as the garden of Stockley Mill and 
scarcely less luxuriant, wdiile a pleasant rustic flavor hung about the 
dairies and market- gardens with which the place then abounded. 

Tom had been informed that he might rely on Robert’s being in 
Ormulu Square before him, because that thriving young gentleman 
would accompany his principal home from the office. He often did 
so. There could" be no doubt that he was a great favorite with Mr. 
Brander, of whose views concerning him and his future he had not 
formed a very mistaken estimate, though probably that gentleman 
would have been startled to find that another mind could give such 
definiteness to thoughts which lay dim and nebulous as dreams in 
his own. There was another reason for the grace Robert had found 
in his employer’s eyes, w T hieh would not have been so flattering to 
that ambitious youth. This was, that Mr. Brander felt thoroughly 
at ease with him. He could think aloud with Robert Sinclair. 
There were reasons why it was not with everybody that he 
could do this with comfort to himself. There were men who 
admired his “sharpness” and envied his success, who he knew 


AT ANY COST. 


61 


would nave been ready with sneer and ridicule to detect him 
in the lapses of phrase or manner which are held to betray 
the self-made man, when they are observed in one, though they 
may pass unnoticed or with indulgence if displayed by a boor of 
long descent. There were other men who he knew honored his un- 
flagging industry and perseverance, who would have turned with 
disgust from some unguarded admission of the principles and the 
objects on which and toward which he worked. There were others 
— iiis own head clerk was one— who, while ready enough to abet him 
in all his mercenary schemes, had yet a singular and cynical knack 
of turning them hiside out and making painfully manifest their 
seamy side, which he would willingly have ignored. 

Robert had none of these disadvantages. While his own man- 
ners were quiet and agreeable — thanks to his father’s teaching and 
his mother's training — he had yet lived among simple folk, and oc- 
casional slips on his part in phrases or etiquette set Mr. Brander at 
ease concerning those solecisms, on which the comments of his own 
wife and daughter kept him forever sore. Again, very different as 
. were his views of morality from those in which the young man had 
been reared, they clearly never startled Robert; he gave them a 
moment’s reflection and adopted them as it they had been his own 
from his birth. And lastly, he never disturbed his patron in that 
belief in his own generosity and good-nature in which Mr. Brander 
delighted to hug himself. 

Twenty times a day did the stock-broker say to himself that “ that 
' boy was born to get on.” Sometimes he said so — not to himself. 
Such prophecies have a tendency to self-fulfillment. They gave 
prestige: they influence the opinions and the actions of others. The 
head clerk regarded Robert Sinclair with a half -suspicious interest: 
the other office myrmidons were deferent. Eveiybody inferred that 
his “ people ” had “ placed him ” with Mr. Brander: Robert took 
care not to disturb such an inference. And yet had the truth been 
known, it might have almost been to his advantage; lor people be- 
lieved in Mr, Brander’s investments, they always turned out so well 
for himself, and nobody would have suspected him of investing 
kindness without very good reasons of his own! 

The door of the house in Ormulu Square was opened by a man- 
servant, who, if he was not too stolid to notice anything, must have 
wondered to see the swift fading of a smile on Tom’s face; for he 
had expected to be admitted by Kirsty Mail. He had never 
dreamed of men-servants, and had felt sure that among the women 
she w T ould have been on the watch to do this courtesy 10 her fellow- 
islander. 

He was led up the stone staircase and ushered into the great draw- 
ing-room, big, and bright, and perplexing with mirrors on every side. 
Mr. Brander met him with a cordial hand-shake, though perhaps 
there was not the best of breeding in his remark that “ this is rather 
different, from where we met first, isn’t it?” ‘He presented him to 
Mrs. Brander, and to Etta (who made a feint as of having never seen 
him before), to a young man whom he called Captain Carson, and 
he finished off by saying jovially that he did not suppose he needed 
to be introduced to Robert. Then he said, with a sudden change to 
fretful impatience, “ When will dinner be ready?” This made Topi 


62 AT ANY COST. 

turn hot all over, as if he had kept the family waiting, though he 
knew that according to his own watch and to all the clocks which 
he had passed on theVay that he was on the early side of punctuality. 
Fortunately it was not many minutes before the man-servant an- 
nounced that “ dinner was on the table,’ ’ and the whole party ad- 
journed in formal procession to the dining-room. 

This room was as big and bright as the other, only its walls were 
more subdued in color, and instead of the dazzling mirrors they were 
hung with battle-pieces in oil, and with two full-length portraits of 
the master and mistress of the house. The artist had “done his 
best ” for them both, but there was nothing in either face to balance 
the wonderful technical dexterity he had thrown into Mr. Brander’s 
dress-coat and Mrs. Brander’s brocaded train, and into other points 
which should have been mere accessories to the human interest.’ 
Probably the lady had been a pretty girl in the days when her hus- 
band had been a good-looking young fellow; but in middle life, 
when faces ought to grow grand as the gentle processes of time de- 
velop the invisible but indelible record of the years that are past, 
she was only paltry and pretty, as he was proud and petulant. 

Mr. Brander saw Tom’s eyes rest on these pictures. 

“Ah, you know who those are, 1 see,” he said. “ Pretty good, 
1 reckon," aren’t they?— and so they should be for the money they 
cost. Three hundred pounds a-piece, not a penny less, though 1 let 
him exhibit ’em in the gallery, which ought to have done him good, 
for a lot of my friends saw them there, and it set them up to get 
their portraits taken too. Advertisement is the soul of trade. But 
he seems to think the obligation was on my side in that matter, 
too.” 

“ Exhibition in that gallery is like the hall-mark on jewelry,” ob- 
served Captain Carson with a drawl of perfect indifference, as if his 
remark was quite spontaneous and in response to nothing. “ When 
you come to sell those pictures, the fact of their exhibition there 
will increase your chances of getting back some of your money.” 

“ So 1 was given to understand, ” said Mr. Brander quite cordially. 
“ Therefore I looked out all the notices of that exhibition in the 
papers, and whenever the newspaper men gave a good word to our 
portraits, 1 cut out the paragraph. They are ali pasted together, 
and stuck on the back of the picture frames, under a strip of horn 
to preserve ’em, and then they are sure to be to the fore when they’re 
wanted. There were a fair number of good notices. 1 know two 
or three newspaper men. They spoke particularly well of Mrs. 
Brander’s dress, and of the table cover on which my hand is resting. ” 

“ My friends do not think that my portrait flatters me,” said Mrs. 
Brander, in a thin, acid voice. 

“ It does not do you justice,” answered Bobert Sinclair. 

“ It looks much too old. I should take the lady in the picture to 
be fully forty years of age,” observed Captain Carson, with the 
slightest perceptible elevation of his eyebrows. “And it was 
painted two years go, was it not?” 

Mrs. Brander knew she was over forty five, though her hair and 
her dress were of the same fashion as her daughter’s. She gave 
her head a little deprecatory shake ? and simpered, “Ah! Captain 
C^rsop,” 


AT ANY COST 


65 


“ But portraits never are a good investment, do what you will,” 
remarked Mr. Blander, sadly. 

44 One doesn’t think of them In that light,” hazarded Tom, “ Who 
would ever think of selling them?” 

“ Pictures will change hands, in the course of a few hundreds 
of years,” said the eaptain imperturbably. ‘‘Just as even family 
Bibles and wedding-rings are to be found in pawnbrokers’ shops.” 

“ Well, 1 suppose the artist’s name'— (what was it, again, Etta? 
fit’s always slipping my memory) — will stand for something.” Mr. 
Brander consoled himself. * 

The captain put up his eyeglass and took a leisurely survey of the 
works of art. “ One wonders how they would be described in a 
catalogue of sale— weird idea, isn’t it?” 

“ They were called ‘ Portrait of Mr. Brander,’ and ‘ Portrait of 
Mrs. Brander,’ in the exhibition catalogue,” said the master of the 
house. “ 1 hear lots of people were asking who we were.” 

“ * Mr. and Mrs. Brander ’ would not do in a catalogue of sale,” 
pursued the captain, quite serenely. 

“ ‘ Portrait of a lady,’ and 4 of a gentleman,’ ” suggested Mrs. 
Brander. “ I’ve seen many old pictures described so. ” 

44 Ah, especially Vandyck’s,” said the captain. “ There’s nothing 
else to be said about most of his. But in this case, I doubt if the de- 
scription would be characteristic enough. W hat would you say to 
4 Full dress costumes of the Victorian era '? That would give them 
antiquarian value, don’t you see?” 

“ The very thing!” cried the unconscious stock-broker. “ They 
might not get treated as portraits at all. That was clever of you, 
captain. Perhaps I sha’n’t have invested badly after all.” 

Then conversation flagged a little, which was small wonder, for 
between gigantic exotic plants and massive pieces of silver none of 
the diners bad a perfectly unobscured view of the others. The plate 
on the table was perfectly oppressive, everything was plate. There 
were several courses, and Mr. Brander did not scruple to recommend 
sundry dishes on the score of their cost and rarity, telling his guests 
they could not get such things every day — not even Captain Carson 
at his club. The dinner rather puzzled Tom; nearly all the viands 
which he knew at all were of a kind that he had seen in Penman’s 
Row months before, and which Grace had since pronounced to be 
“ out of season.” Though he was certainly becoming accustomed, 
to many strange varieties of life and fashion, he did not yet distinctly ! 
realize that the locomotive power of many ships and the skill and 
strength of scores of captains and hundreds of seamen, the capital 
of many traders, and the labor of numberless laborers are regularly 
wasted in nothing more productive to the general good than the 
furnishing of summer fruits in midwinter and winter viands at 
midsummer. 

44 Have you heard news from Shetland lately, Mr. Ollison?” asked 
Mr. Brander, sipping his sixth glass of wine. * 

“ 1 heard from my father last week, sir,” Tom answered. 

“ When did you hear, Sinclair?” asked the stock-broker of Robert. 

This morning,” replied Robert. 

“No news in particular?” questioned Mr. Brander again, with 
the self-satisfied smile of one who is reserving a bonne bouche. 


AT AtfY COST. 


“ Nothing at all— the letter was only from my mother/* said 
Robert, easily. 

*' 1 hope they are quite well at Quodda,” inquired Tom. 

‘‘Oli, yes,” returned Robert, “all quite well. At least, my 
father has been rather poorly.” 

“ I’m sorry for that,” observed Mr. Brander, evidently absorbed 
with something apart; “perhaps that accounts for her not telling 
you the news. ” 

“ Oh, it is evidently nothing, for my mother is easily alarmed, 
but clearly she is not anxious in this case,” said Robert. “But 
what is the news, if we may ask, sir?” 

“ That there have been whales in Wallness Voe,” said the stock- 
broker, looking round with a beaming face. “ 1 had the telegram 
concerning it after 1 came home from office, just while 1 was dress- 
ing for dinner.” 

“ What’s the significance of that?” asked Mrs. Brander, who had 
had too long an experience of her husband to doubt that anything 
which pleased him must have some very solid basis. 

Less experienced Etta said aside to the captain, “ Horrid things! 
They’ll make the place smell for miles. The castle will be un- 
endurable.” She liked to mention the castle to the captain, and she 
liked best of all to mention it with depreciation. 

“ What’s the significance of it?” echoed Mr. Brander. “ Why, 
as it was a large shoal and blubber is up in the market just now/it 
will bring me in a round £300 or so, not a penny less, without a bit 
of trouble or risk on my part. That’s the way to make money, 
isn’t it, young gentlemen?” 

“Jolly,” ejaculated the captain. Robert Sinclair murmured as- 
senting admiration. For once, it was Tom who was absorbed in 
mental calculation. He knew well enough about these matters. 
If Mr. Brander reckoned on receiving £300, that meant that the 
shoM caught had not been worth less than £900, since according to 
island use and wont, “the proprietor of the land adjoining the 
shore where whales are stranded obtains a third of the proceeds, 
while two-thirds are divided among the captors.” Tom could easily 
guess that not less than a hundred men would have been engaged in 
capturing these monsters of the deep, to say nothing of half-grown 
lads. The share, therefore, of those who had encountered all the 
risk and toil of the adventure would be somewhere about £5 a 
piece. And Tom, who knew most of the islands well, gave thought 
to many a humble home about Wallness, where, during the ensuing 
winter, this moderate windfall would make all the difference be- 
tween need and debt, and sufficiency and peace. 

** It’s an odd thing is luck!” mused Mr. Brander. “ This hasn’t 
happened at Wallness for over thirty years. If poor old Leisk (that 
was the late laird of Wallness and St. Ola) had only been able to 
hold on one more year, this would have fallen to him instead of to 
me. Providence seems to fight against some men and for others. 
Luck’s a queer thing, but 1 do seem to have it.” 

It never occurs to some people to doubt' that providence must 
hold the same ideas about fortunes that they hold themselves. Mr 
Brander spoke modestly, as if he didn’t want to claim too much 
credit for himself. The Psalmist says that when we do good for 


AT ANY COST. 


65 


ourselves others speak well of us; he might have added, for it is 
equally true, that when good — or what we call good — happens to 
us, few of us can help thinking well of ourselves! There is a true 
hit at poor human nature in the old nursery rhyme — 

“ Little Jack Horner sat in a corner 
Eating a Christmas pie; 

He put in his thumb and pithed out a plum, 

And cried, ‘ What a good boy am I !’ ” 

“ At the same time,” mused Mr. Brander, “ nothing of the soil 
is as -profitable nowadays as it used to be. In old Leisk’s father’s 
time the laird got half the value of a shoal. At that rate, 1 should 
have got £450 to day instead of £3C0.” 

“ Oh, but the common people are coming to the front now,” said 
Mrs. Brander, with a fine scorn. “ They are to have everything, 
whether they know how to use it or not.” Then after a moment’s 
pause, she added, “ I think you must indulge Etta in the fancy ball 
she was begging for the other day. You can’t call it an extrava- 
gance when you have just had a pretty little windfall like this.” 

“ Oh, Etta shall have her treat. I’ll give it all over to the ladies,” 
said the stock broker, who liked to parade his domestic indulgence. 
“ 1 sha’n’t be a ruined man yet awhile.” 

“ You said you were last week,” observed his wife. There was 
often much badinage of this sort in the fanfily. 

“ Ah, that was when 1 thought Government was going to play so 
false as to agree to a treaty which would let the New Atlantan 
Federation shake off the loan their abdicated king got from us. Not 
that they w T ould have ruined me, only if once any government be- 
gins fool’s play of the sort, one doesn’t know where it will stop. 
Capital doesn’t want anything to do with sentiment, it only wants 
interest and security,” 

“ The New Atlantan people are reduced to terrible straits by the 
taxation imposed on them by their late rulers,” Tom observed, 
quietly. The newspapers had been full of the slow starvation and 
subtle pestilence which were breaking the heart and decimating the 
ranks of the hard-working and law-abiding peasantry of a remote 
country. There was a fund for their relief in the city even now. 
Tom and Mr. Sandison had talked over the matter. Mr. Sandison’s 
eyes had gleamed, and his words had been fierce. Tom had inno- 
cently suggested a contribution to this fund, as a relief for his feel- 
ings. But Mr. Sandison had said bitterly, that no money of his 
should be filtered through the blood and tears of the oppressed, 
back into the pockets of idle usurers of his own race — that to give 
money to the suffering Atlantans was only to send it by a round- 
about way to the Atlantan bondholders. “ Then must the poor 
people be left to perish?” Tom had asked, sorrowfully. “ If they 
perish, in making manifest an evil, and bringing it one step nearer 
to its end, they have not lived and died in vain,” the bookseller had 
retorted. And then he had relapsed into gloomy silence. And he 
never told Tom that by the next mail he wrote out to an official in 
New Atlanta, and bade him search among the orphans made so by 
the famine, and pick out the most promising boy, and send him to 
^England, to be educated at his expense. 

5 


66 


AT ANY COST, 


Mr. Branded face darkened at Tom’s remark about the Atlantan 
destitution, and Robert Sinclair said glibly: 

“ There is a great deal of exaggeration in those newspaper re- 
ports, and they do much harm.” 

“ Ay, that’s just it,” rejoined Mr. Brander readily. " The New 
Atlantans are just a set of idle beggars. Talk about toiling lives! 
1 don’t believe one in a million of them does as much work as 1 do. 
There was no talk about destitution when they wanted to take our 
money; but only when we want our interest. We are not asking 
for our capital, mind, only for its interest. Where would they have 
been without it if they are so poor with it? What has become of it 
all?” 

“ It was made away with by the king and the court,” pleaded 
Tom. “ The people who have got to pay the interest have never 
benefited by one farthing of the "capital ; 1 don’t suppose in such a 
country as that is, that they even knew it was being boi rowed. 
They only knew they had more and more taxes to pay. Don’t you 
think all those who have money to lend, should take care what is to 
be done with it, or at least ascertain that those from whom they 
mean to exact repayment are anxious for the loan?” 

“ The Atlantans should not have had a king for whom they did 
not mean to be responsible,” decided Mr. Brander. 

“ They did not want him,” said Tom. ‘‘We know he was forced 
upon them by a foreign power which was too strong for them to 
resist at the time. They were always trying to get rid of him. 
They have succeeded at last.” 

“And you’ll see they won’t be a bit better oft,” growled the 
stock-broker. 

“ They can not be while they groan under the burdens he has left 
behind him,” said Tom. 

“ And I suppose we are to lift oft their burdens, at our own ex- 
pense?” laughed Mr. Brander. “ Very fine, young man! You 
haven’t anj^ Atlantan bonds, that’s very clear. No, no, business is 
business and charity is charity. I’m not willing to give up my own, 
but I ; m willing to do anything that’s right and reasonable. 1 wrote 
a check tor fifty pounds for the Atlantan fund only yesterday. 
That’s the sort of sympathy I have. Put ’em on their legs again, 
says 1, and let ’em pay their debts.” (Tom thought of Mr. Sandi- 
son’s words.) “ Have you given your mite pet, young man, as you’re 
so fond of ’em?” And Mr. Brander laughed heartily, and felt that 
he had covered young Ollison with confusion. 

“ They are a set of mere savages,” observed young Carson. He . 
had been abroad with his regiment once ordwice, and knew exactly 
as much of the populations among whom he had stayed a few weeks, 
as a foreigner would, who made a short visit to London, and had 
occasion to give occasional orders to a few waiters and shoe-blacks. 

“ Nobody who has not lived among them can realize the difference 
between them anil ourselves.” 

“ Ah! well,” said Mr. Brander, relapsing into his favorite tone of 
philosophic toleration, “ we must not crow too loud. We have not 
all been such great shakes ourselves for so long, but that they may 
soon overtake us. Why, there’s been things done in the British Isles 
not so very long ago, that make one’s blood run cold to think of. 


AT ANY COST. 


67 


Think o' the Cornish wreckers! Heartless wretches, misleading 
men on to rocks, and snatching their goods from them when they 
were drowning, and killing ’em if they didn’t drown fast enough. 
1 don’t know if they ever did that exactly in Shetland,” he went 
on, turning to Robert. “ But it’s a common fact that there they 
were very reluctant to save drowning men.” 

“ They say there's a lingering feeling of that sort to this day in 
some parts,” said Robert — “ remote parts, of course.” 

Mr. Bran der shook his head lugubriously. “ That’s where it is.” 
he said, ‘‘that we get led into such mistakes by comparing these 
people with ourselves. It’s quite natural that everything should 
be different with them; they would be no more able to appreciate 
our houses and our comforts than our ideas of morality and mercy.” 

Tom Ollisou’s Norse blood was on fire. ‘‘You should not say 
what you said about the people nowadays, Sinclair,” he said. “ At 
any rate, you should not say it without saying something else. 
Why don’t j 7 ou tell how twelve Whalsey men three times risked 
their lives to bring off from a little rock the two poor survivors of 
the ship ‘ Pacific’? Why don’t you tell of that other shipwreck, 
when every life was saved by the courage and resources of the 
islanders, one brave man cheering on the rest, by telling them ‘ not 
to think o’ the big waves, bu* aye o’ the drowning men?’ ” 

Mr. Brander made no observation on this patriotic little outburst. 
He only said, ‘‘ Can anything be more horrid than that story, whose 
truth I have never heard disputed, about some wrecked mariners, 
who were very nearly landed on one of the smaller islands, when 
one of the old fishers warned the others that their winter store of 
meal would scarcely suffice for themselves, and that what these 
strangers would require would have to be taken out of their own 
mouths? Whereupon, after a little debate, the half-perished men 
were summarily thrust back into the sea.” 

“ Oh! papa!” cried Etta, “ don’t tell such horrid things!” 

“ Horrid enough!” said Tom, “ and yet, there is something to be 
pleaded for those poor people— something to be urged in mitigation 
of their alleged reluctance to save drowning men at all. Think what 
those drowning men, when saved, must have often proved— pirates 
of the seas, murderers and ravishers, the Ishmaels of other lands, 
who probably had taught the islanders many a bitter experience. 
And as for Mr. Brander’s terrible story, let us remember that they 
stood so near the edge of starvation that it seemed to them a matter 
of a life for a life— not their own life either, but the life of inhocent 
wife and child.” 

“ I am sure no woman would have wished such a thing to be 
done for her sake,” said Mrs. Brander. “It is against womanly 
instincts, which are all for mercy and self-sacrifice.” 

“ 1 don’t defend the people. 1 don’t excuse them,” cried Tom, 
feeling how utterly he was misunderstood. “ I only want to ac 
count for it as justly as it may be. Heroes would not have done 
such a thing, but whatever we may hope we would do ourselves, 
we must not be too hard on those who, being sorely tried, do not 
prove heroic. ’ ’ 

Tom and Captain Carson both left the dinner-table when the ladies 
rose, Mr. Brander poured himself out a glass of brandy and bade 


68 


AT ANY COST. 


Robert remain with him; he wanted to dictate a business letter, 
which must be dispatched that night. 

Mrs. Brander lett Etta to 'pour out tea from tbe silver service, 
which was set forth on the gypsy table, and to exchange sparkling 
whispers with the captain. She herself sank down on a billowy 
chair and took possession of Tom. 

She asked him where he went to church; she trusted he was not 
like so many young men, who neglected that duty altogether. She 
did not seem quite contented w'hen she found that he frequented an 
obscure chapel in the East End of London, where an aged clergy-" 
man had spent a long life in gathering about him a flock of starved 
and bewildered human sheep and lambs, and now fed them with 
the plain, practical, spiritual food which was convenient for them;, 
the quiet worker and his quiet work going serenely on amid the 
noisy rush of common religious and philanthropic fashion, like an 
oak ‘slowly growing in the midst of tares. Doubts had come to 
Tom since his arrival in London; problems had started out before 
his eyes, which the simple creed oi his childhood had scarcely suf- 
ficed to work out. Peter Sandison himself had lain heavily on the 
young man’s soul, with his unhappy face, his haunting eyes, the 
strangely soft tones of his voice, his swift straight insight into the 
heart of the rights and wrongs about him, and his significantly dead 
silence on those subjects of w^hich Grace had unhesitatingly asserted 
.liis unbelief. Tom knew no more of his master's past than he had 
known on the day when they first met. He knew as little the secret 
of the locked-up rooms whose doors he passed night and morning, 
as he did of the mystery between the sealed leaves of the Bible. 
The youth was living in an atmosphere of doubt; if not of despair, 
w T hich affects faith as the subtlest argument or the strongest logic 
can not do. Tom’s heallhy practicality had alone saved him from 
succumbing. “ 1 can’t do without God,’ 5 he had said to himself, 
“ nor without feeling that God w r ants me as much as I want Him. 
Why, 1 couldn’t even stick to Mr. Sandison, unless 1 believed some- 
thing that he doesn’t believe— if he doesn’t, at least ’’—for Tom 
was growing more weary in his acceptance oi people’s opinions of 
others’ creeds or conduct. So, he had followed that instinct to seek 
and find its proper nourishment, which surely none will deny to 
soul of man, when w^e know the creeping strawberry has it. Faith, 
he found, revived in the sunshine and cheer and human kindliness 
of Stockley, where he had gone again and again. “ I’ve read some-' 
where that what’s true in the sunshine is also true in the dark,” 
argued Tom, “ and that means, too, that the sunshine finds out 
what is false in the dark. Therefore, let one get into the sunshine 
as much as one can.” And Tom had turned from all mere Chris- 
tian apologetics, and had persevered in a search after this soul-sun- 
shine, until he found it in the fellowship of that poor little chapel. 
There was something undeniably real in a gospel which had lifted 
that congregation, almost to a man, out of the very mire, and had 
set it on its feet, and kept, it straight and cheerful in the teeth of bit- 
ter struggles for very life, in which the victory was by no means 
always against want and woe in their harshest forms. “ Hone of us 
have died of starvation— yet,” said the old clergyman, “ but a good 
many of us have had to go to the workhouse. Well, may be that 


AT ANY COST. 69 

stands for the arena, and the wild beasts for the Christians of to- 
day.” 

Mrs. Brander heard Tom's account of his fellow -worshipers with 
a silence which had a something of disapproval about it. She 
summed up b}^ saying “ that it was very interesting,” only she won- 
dered Tom had not joined a certain congregation which Tom knew 
worshiped with a good deal of clamor and sensationalism not very 
far from Penman’s Row ; its pastor was such a remarkable person, 
and had such a power of attracting influential people about him; she 
supposed there were really more people of wealth and intluence in 
that congregation than in any other in London; it, would be really 
an exceireut thing for a young man to belong to that church. Of 
course, she had" the utmost sympathy for what might be called 
4 ‘ mission services,” but it seemed queer to think of belonging to 
one. that was quite difleient! One longed to do good to poor peo- 
ple. She had gone once or twice to the “Refuge for Restitute 
Strangers,” in which a great friend of hers took much interest. But 
really the people were so very poor and dirty and uncared for, that, 
with her delicate constitution, she was afraid she might “ catch 
something,” and there was Etta to be considered. These people 
were very hard to reach; one of them had spoken most rudely and 
cruelly to her great friend only last Christmas-day, though the dear 
soul had such a sweet spirit that, after the first pang, she tried to 
pass off the incident as a mere trifle. But one liked to do what one 
could, and, though she herself could not do much work for any- 
thing, she was so fragile, and so over -occupied with social duties — 
yet she gave her influence on as many committees as possible, and 
attended a great many meetings. She was just now greatly inter- 
ested in the formation of a society for Redressing the Wrongs of 
Russian Priests— she dare say Tom had heard of it, and of the good 
work it purposed to do. 

She had spoken almost m monologue, only broken up by inter- 
rogative tones, to which Tom had duly responded. Then she asked 
him about Shetland; she supposed he had not been home since he 
left the island. Mr. Brander intended to let Wallness Castle for the 
summer seasons, it was not likely they Would ever go there. Etta’s 
one visit had been quite enough for her. She herself could never 
consent to run the risks of sea-sickness and rough weather, merely 
to be buried alive in a wild solitude. Poor old Mr. Leisk had man- 
aged his estale himself; it was small wonder he had got involved in 
difficulties — listening to all the complaints and accepting all the ex- 
cuses of the people. Mr. Brander was going to manage things 
through an agent ; he could keep the agent up to the mark, and the 
agent wmuld do the same to the tenants. 

Tom scarcely knew how to take all this, so he contented himself by 
making an inquiry after the well-doing and well- being of Christian 
Mail. 

Mrs. Brander looked puzzled. “Christian Mail!” she repeated 
doubtfully. “ Oh, 1 know'! You mean Jane, the housemaid. To 
be sure, she comes from Shetland; or is it from Orkney?” 

“ KirstyMail came from Scantness, quite near Clegga, my home,” 
said Tom, a little bewildered in his turn. 

“ 1 dare say— it is very likely — of course, 1 never inquired exact 


70 


AT ANY COST. 


particulars,” replied Mrs. Brander; “ and we call her Jane, because 
Jane is the permanent name for the second housemaid’s place. One 
shifts these girls so often, one could not be always varying the 
names, too; one could never remember the 8 changes; and some of 
their names are most unsuitable— quite out of place. Fancy ad- 
dressing servants as Clementina or Sophia! My first housemaid is 
always Sarah, the second one Jane; and the cooks are called Wat- 
son, and the butler Simpson. They can call the scullery-maid what 
they please among themselves, as, of course, 1 never deal with her 
personally. It is an excellent plan. 1 w r ould advise every mistress 
to adopt it.” 

Tom sat wondering. If permanency was seen to be an excellent 
thing, would it not be wiser to endeavor to secure its leality, instead 
of inventing a sham? And surely, judging from his own experi- 
ence, these poor servant-maids, among the surroundings of Ormolu 
Square, must find it hard enough to maintain the identity of their 
honest, industrious selves in their working fathers’ homes, even 
without losing the very name under which they had been reared? 

Mrs. Brander suddenly remembered that the little explanation 
which she had given had been elicited by a question. 

“ You were asking after Jane,” she said. “Well, I’m rather 
disappointed in her. From all 1 had heard of the primitive life of 
the islands, 1 had hoped that a girl coming from them would not be 
spoiled in less than two or three years; but I’m afraid that love of 
dress, and of pleasure, and of idleness is inherent in the lower 
classes. Really Jane had not been in London for more than a month 
before she began to assert all the rights that these saucy damsels 
always claim. She actually had the impertinence to ask me to let 
her go out fora walk sometimes in the afternoon when her work 
was done! She said she wanted to see the British Museum and the 
National Gallery! The very ideal” 

“ Kirsty was used to a very out-door life at Scantness,” said Tom 
in excuse, his thoughts flying back to her grandmother’s little hovel, 
with the peat fire on the rude hearth, and the hole in the roof to let 
out the smoke, but with a glorious prospect of moor and mountain 
and bay stretching in front of the heavy door, through which the 
bracing wind from the sea found hospitable welcome. “ Town life 
is very irksome till one gets accustomed to it,” he added feelingly. 

“ I told Jane that she must school herself to her new situation in 
life,” said Mrs. Brander, “ but, as she looked pale and dull, 1 told 
her she might have her day out once a month, which was more than 
I had promised for her to her aunt, fiom w^hom I engaged her. 
Then, of course, she has always Sunday evenings. 1 am sure that 
is enough change and fresh air for any servant, especially as I believe 
they generally take a Sunday walk instead of going to church. As 
for exercise, they can get enough of that in the house if they do 
their work actively. Jane is inclined to be smart in her dress, too. 
But, as I insist that a certain uniform is to be worn by my servants 
while they are doing their duties, 1 never interfere beyond that. 1 
am afraid all gratitude and loyalty have died out of the class. They 
think of nothing but the wages and the privileges they can extort 
from their employers. Things w r ere different once! There was a 
woman entered my mother ’s service, forty years ago, at exactly half 


AT ANY COST. 


71 


the wages 1 am paying Jane, and she is still in this house to day. Of 
course, she has not been fit for much for some time, but she did 
w hat she could, and w r e just maintained the poor old thing out oi 
kindness; but now she is losing her sight, and she really needs some- 
body to look after her, and 1 don’t now what she will have to do. It 
is not pleasant to think of her going to the workhouse— she dislikes 
it so herself— though I am sure she would be well takeii care of; 
but these people have such strange fancies. And they are doing 
aw r ay with ail the dear old almshouses, into w T hich influential people 
used to be able to get old servants. It is really very hard on the 
poor souls. Do you happen to know of any little fund vre could 
secure for her? I say to Mr. Brander that surely there must be such 
things, hut he is always so busy that he forgets to inquire. 1 am 
sure I w T ould be ready to take any trouble in the matter — to canvass 
anybody anywhere for votes or interest! 1 think a great deal of 
consideration is due to old servants.” 

“ 1 think old servants are a great nuisance,” said Etta, handing 
Tom a cup of tea. “ They want their own way, and they are al- 
vras bringing up old stories, and they think they have earned a right 
to shake their heads over one.” 

“ 1 think they are really an anachronism w T here everything else is 
young — or is new the proper word?” said the inscrutable Captain 
Carson; “ but they are well enough in their way in dusty old cas- 
tles, with fusty old coats of arms and musty old charter chests.” 

Mr. Brander and Robert did not come up to the drawing-room till 
it was nearly time for Tom to depart. Notwithstanding the chatty 
confidence with which the hostess had treated him, her murmured 
*‘ So glad to have seen you — hope to have the pleasure again,” 
seemed merely automatic. Etta was rather more cordial in her 
adieux, and the stock-broker said, with a bluff heaviness that took 
all offense from the words, that “ he hoped he would soon see him 
again, and that he would hav^ grown wiser by that time.” 

The portly man-servant was waiting at the hall door to let Tom 
out; but as he was passing a shady corridor opening on to the land- 
ing a slight figure glided forward, making, however, no sign of 
greeting. 

” Kirsty!” said Tom, “ I’m glad to see you before 1 leave. 1 was 
asking after you.” 

“ That w r on’t please ’em,” answered Kirsty. “Eh, but it’s good 
to hear my own name again.” 

“ 1 hope you’re getting on nicely, Kirsty,” said Tom, thinking of 
the report he had heard. “You will find" London life very strange, 
but you will be getting used to it by this time.” 

“I’ll never get used to it here ,” returned Kirsty, emphatically. 
“ An’ I’m going to give warning as soon as it suits me exactly. 1 
know how to look after myself now. I’ve learned that here, that’s 
one thing, though no thanks to them. And being shut in a box and 
buried alive suits me no better than it suits Miss Etta. She likes go- 
ing about and dressing up as well as anybody; and what is good for 
the goose is good for the gander, a,s Hannah says.” 

“ Oh, Kirsty,” said Tom, “ don’t begin thinking and talking like 
that!” (He w r ondered vaguely who Hannah w r as.) ‘‘Think of 
your grandmother, and how she’ll like to know of your keeping 


72 AT ANY COST. 

your place. If you throw up your situation your money will soon 
go, and you won't be able to send anything to her. It ought to be 
your turn sometimes. Your uncle has done a gieat deal for her for 
a long time now— and for you too/’ 

“ Everybody must look after number one a bit. I’ve stayed here 
more than two years already, and that’s a long character for Lon- 
don,” persisted Kirsty. “ I’m not going to have all the life ground 
out of me. I’m young as well as anybody else, and if I don’t have 
my day now 1 never shall. ” 

“ What better ‘ day ’ can there be than one’s day’s work, and 
somebody to work for?” asked Tom. Oh, Kirsty, I can’t stand 
here, now, to say much ; but. take care how you get out of a situa- 
tion. London is no place for a girl to be adrift in who has no home 
and no friends in it.” 

“ Maybe 1, have some friends,” said Kirsty, with a toss of her 
head. “ I’ve got my cousin Hannah here. She's come up from 
Edinburgh.” 

“ And what is she doing?” asked Tom. 

“ She’s in a place— a very different one from this,” said Kirstj". 
“ She’s happy enough, and she’d soon get me one as good.” 

“ Well, Kirsty,” pleaded Tom, “ 1 can’t say anything more, ex- 
cept to beg you to consider your steps before you make them. Why 
don’t you write to j^our uncle, and get his advice?” He saw Kir- 
sty’s head give a stubborn little shake. “ And if you do change,” 
he added, thinking of many a tragic story of want and woe with 
which even his brief city experience had made him acquainted, “ if 
you do change you’ll let me know where you go to? A line will 
reach me diiected to No. 10 Penman’s Row. Old neighbors must 
not altogether lose each other in a crowd, Kirsty.” He wished 
within himself that old Grace Allan was a woman whose hospitality 
and interest he might have invoked for the girl. “ Good-by, Kir- 
sty,” and he held out his hand to her. 

“ Good by, sir, and thank you for Speaking friendly to me, sir,” 
said Kirsty, determined, with strange loyalty, to mark her con- 
sciousness of the difference of rank between Mr. Ollison and herself, 
for the benefit of the Branders’ man-servant. “ There’s some gentry 
who knows how to speak civil to servants,” she said saucily to that 
individual as he closed the door behind Tom. 

“ 1 thought I’d heard the young gent was in the bookselling and 
cataloguing trade,” returned the man. He had gathered this from 
some remarks which had passed between Mr. Brander and Robert 
after dinner. 

“ And isn’t that as good as the money-selling trade like the mas- 
ter’s?” retorted the damsel, “ Leastways, it teaches better manners 
than what we see in this house.” 

“Hear me,” observed Mrs. Brander, reclining on her couch in 
the drawing-room, “ do 1 not heai voices on the stairs? What bus- 
iness have the servants to he discussing there?” 

“ It’s Mr, Ollison’s voice surely?” remarked Etta, listening. 

“And Kirsty’s,” added Robert after a moment’s pause. He 
laughed. “ Ollison would be sufe to speak to the girl if he saw her, 
and probably she has taken care to give him a chance of so doing.” 

“ Dear me, how awkward— and how very improper!” said Mrs. 


AT .ANY COST. 73 

Brander. The hall door closed, so that the interview had evidently- 
ended. 

Robert Sinclair laughed again. “ Tom is a fine fellow,” he said, 
“ but a little peculiar. ” 

“He seems quite an original,” observed Etta. She had been 
rather attracted to Tom on this occasion. [Neither her eyes nor her 
heart had had noble training, but there was something in the grand 
outline ot Tom’s head, and in his frank and friendly bearing, which 
had not failed to impress her, when she saw them now with the 
commendation of evening dress and the concomitants of good man- 
ners, though they had quite escaped her when she first met him in 
his lough native tweeds with the cashie slung on his shoulder. 

“ Very original, doubtless,” snarled the stock-broker. Tom fas- 
cinated him; but it was a very different thing if Etta began to 
praise the youth, or, indeed, to notice him. “ Very original, doubt- 
less! An original beggar he’ll be, it he makes up his mind always 
to be on the wrong side, as he was invariably to-night. Bother 
originality, 1 say! Give me practical common sense!” 

And Tom, hurrying through the dark, silent streets, felt very glad 
that his lace was set toward Penman’s Row. But when Mr. San- 
disou greeted nis return with “ Well, are you glad you went?” Tom 
answered, “ Yes, sir, foi 1 saw a girl in the Branders’ service who 
came from Shetland when 1 did, and 1 think she’s lonesome, and I 
think she was pleased to see me.” 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE END OF A QUIET LIFE. 

Robert Sinclair’s report of his home nervs had been perfectly 
correct. His mother, in writing to him, had touched but lightly on 
his father’s indisposition — had even spoken of it, as it seemed to 
him, rather in the past than in the present tense. And what he had 
said was also quite true, that she was more prone to exaggerate than 
to slight any evil or danger which seemed to approach those she 
loved. But it did not seem to occur to him that, in the forecast of 
such a spirit as hers, any word of the father’s suffering reaching the 
son while he was among strangers, and while he must perforce re- 
main tar from his home, would seem to mean for him such unut- 
terable anxiety and agony that she would be almost morbidly scrupu- 
lous in her manner oi conveying it. She had been through all that 
anguish hersell, banished in her island exile, -while her home-ties 
dropped away. And others had not been so careful and tender over 
her feelings. She had been repeatedly made to suffer as much over 
false alarms and doubtful hints, as she did at last over the reality of 
death. And her one thought was always how to spare others what 
she herself had suffered. 

There were, too, at first some grounds for Robert’s idea, that the 
worst, whether it had been little or much, was already over. But 
the surpiise and shock of Mr. Sinclair’s sudden attack of illness had 
really only given way to the knowledge that such attacks must be 
expected in the future, and that the one poor chance of his ever re- 
gaining enough health to continue his duties in Quodda school lay 


74 


AT ANY COST, 


in the successful result of a difficult and delicate surgical operation 
which could scarcely be done with any hope of benefit, except under 
the special skill and adapted surroundings of a capital city, involv- 
ing, therefore, all the expense and delay of a sea-journey. There 
were anxious days and nights in Quodda schoolhouse. The school- 
master himself tried to make light of his own suffering and dan- 
ger; but even he could not make light of the possibility "of his death 
leaving his wife and Olive alone in the world — “ such a cold world,’ * 
the poor wife had sobbed once— just once— and then had taken her- 
self severely to task for not being able to put a cheerful face on 
whatever prospect might lie before them, and so to help to reconcile 
him to leaving them, if he had to die. ‘ 4 1 always did pray to be 
taken first,” she said once to Olive. “But it was not altogether 
that 1 did not see it was almost as hard to have to go away safely 
one’s self, and not to know what is to happen to those we love, as it 
is to be left — harder sometimes, perhaps. Only 1 felt as if 1 was 
such a weak creature 1 could not bear to be left — while your father 
has such strong bright faith that staying behind would have been 
different for him. 1 dare say it was pure selfishness on my part, and 
has got to come out of me. You can’t think how constantly it has 
been in my mind, Olive. You know the old superstition about giv- 
ing 4 a wish ’ when one sees a piebald horse. Of course it is all non- 
sense — wicked nons.ense, perhaps. But ever since 1 was first mai- 
ried 1 have always kept that wish ready for such occasions — ‘ May 1 
die before my husband.’ 1 ought to be ashamed of myself. There 
oughtn’t to be a wish about such things, except ‘ Goa’s will be 
done.’ ” 

Olive Sinclair’s mind and nature were fast developing in the 
keenly vital atmosphere of sorrow and pain. She was the confidante 
of both parents. Her father’s one shrinking from death was for the 
parting from her and her mother, but it was only the parting he 
feared; he had no fear for them or their future. 

“ Everybody will be kind to you,” he said; “ 1 don’t think any- 
body could help being kind to your mother, and they’ll be kind to 
you, too— only 1 think you are one of the sort who are very soon 
able to help themselves.” (People often said this to Olive, and she 
never made any denial or piotest; but a watchful observer might 
have seen that a shadow always fell across her face when she heard 
those words.) “It is in the nature of things that people should be 
Eind to widows and orphans even on what one may call selfish 
grounds, at least on grounds which are not the highest. In every 
widow and orphan every man sees what his own wife and child 
will be, if he is taken; and so he treats them as he would like his 
own to be treated. Don’t you see how reasonable that is, Olive?” 

“ It is quite reasonable, father,” said Olive. “ But I am not so 
sure that many people are reasonable. Why does the Bible have so 
many injunctions concerning widows and orphans, if it is in the 
nature of things that people should be kind to them? The Bible 
seems to speak as if they were too often the victims of extortion and 
injustice. Perhaps it is different in these days,” she added hastily, 
fearing lest she might be adding a new distress to the invalid. 
“ And, at any rate, daddy dear, mother and I will do very well in- 
deed, it we get from others the kindness you have always given to 


AT ANY COST. 


75 




widows and orphans.” Olive had not been without little private 
resentments against &undrj r widows whose grief seemed to be a par- 
ticular obstacle to their industry, and against certain orphans who 
had seemed ready to take everything except counsel. But she was 
glad now, lor her father’s sake, that if he had erred at all it had 
been on the softer side. “ And mother and 1 are not going to be 
widow and orphan yet,” the girl added gravely, with a deadly sink- 
ing of her heart. 

“ No, you will certainly not be a widow and an orphan in the sad 
sense,” rejoined the schoolmaster, “ for you will have Robert to look 
after you. Robert is certainly on the highway to fortune, though 
he may have a steep hill before him. If anything happens to me 1 
dare say he will be able at once to take you both to live with him in 
London. It could be done cheaply, for it would only do* your 
mother good to work for and look after you both, and you would 
have the better opportunily for finding out how you could secure 
your own independence.” 

Olive said nothing. She hadagiri's natural delight in having 
pride and faith in an only brother. " But she had also one of those 
clear-seeing and sincere souls which cannot perpetrate frauds on 
themselves, even for their own pleasure. “I don’t think Robert 
writes as often as he might,” she had otten thought to herself, “ nor 
that his letters are worth as much as they should be. He ought to 
know what a delight a letter from him is to mother, and how she 
w T orries, all to herself, when one doesn’t come. And he ought to 
know what an interest we should all feel in every little detail of his 
life. If he wrote real, good letters,' I should not grudge their com- 
ing but seldom, and 1 don’t believe mother would yearn after them 
so much; as it is, she is always in hopes the next will give her 
more satisfaction. Such letters as he does write he might write every 
day without wasting much of his valuable time— though he always 
is so busy.” 

And Olive had noticed that during the correspondence which had 
gone on since her father’s illness, Robert bad sought as fewnarticu- 
lars concerning their situation as he had given concerning his owm 
prosperity. He had written that certainly his father should undergo 
the operation, and that as soon as possible; he wondered there was 
any delay in the matter. But he made no inquiry concerning ways 
and means, and gave no hint of any practical aid it might be in his 
power to render. Olive knew that her mother had confidently ex- 
pected such an offer, for Mrs. Sinclair had remarked that when 
Robert should make it, they might tell him “ they could manage for 
the present, but would rely on his backing up their resources when 
they failed, and that then they must do as much as they could them- 
selves, and so perhaps spare him altogether.” But when the offer 
did not come, Mrs. Sinclair said nothing. 

So a temporary arrangement was made whereby Quodda school 
was trusted to a substitute, and father, mother and daughter started 
on their weary pilgrimage toward the South. Olive would have re- 
mained behind to spare the scanty means, but that during his bad 
attacks, always imminent, her father required such constant nursing 
as to make two attendants necessary. And the schoolmaster said 
cheerily, “ that it was indeed an ill wind that blew nobody good,” 


AT ANY COST. 


76 

and be should not grudge his pains as they had so evidently secured 
him his daughter’s company. But in Olive’s own ear, he whispered 
that she must have come in any case, lor it would never do if her 
mother should be alone in the event of anything happening] 

All the way from Quodda to the sea-port, not one of the sad little 
party said much concerning the course or the end of their journey, 
though they all spoke persistently of how the country would be look- 
ing on their return, and even, with desperate courage, went so far 
as to say that they might be detained away much longer than they 
thought. They were not going further than the Scottish capital, 
and they wondered if Robert might get a holiday to come North and 
join them there for their return. That would set me up again,” 
remarked the schoolmaster, thinking to wile his wife from her fears 
for him, by this pleasant prospect. The son had been away from 
home for nearly three years already. “ Time always seems to have 
passed quickly when once it is gone/’ said tne mother, wistfully, 
thinking how slow the passing days wrere just then, with a terrible 
suspense elongating the hours into weeks. “ 1 wish mother would 
go sound asleep for at least two months,” thought Olive, “ and only 
wake when all is well again.” 

In the schoolmaster’s enfeebled condition, they- had seen it neces- 
say to plan to break the voyage at each port where the vessel stopped. 
And when they landed at Kirkwall, Olive, at least, felt quite sure 
that they would never get any further south. Still even she scarcely 
looked for the end, or at least, not at once. They had taken thrifty 
lodgings in a rambling, heavily-built small-chambered old house, in 
sight of St. Magnus’s Cathedral, and there the schoolmaster lay 
down to rest, and, as it proved, to die. The mother and daughter 
had already been safely through so many alarms, that when his last 
attack came on, they prepared for a night of watch and sleeplessness, 
with alert skill and devotion rather than with absolute fear. The 
paroxysm of pain and feverishness had passed, and the invalid lay- 
in the heavy slumber from which he had often awakened refreshed 
and belter for the time being. Olive felt her eyes growing heavy, 
their lids had indeed fallen, when she w T as aroused by seeing her 
mother rise with silent swiftness from the chair on which she had 
been reclining. She bent over the bed. Olive was by her side in a 
second. Her father was aw T ake, and there was a look on his face 
which she had never seen before. She had never seen any one die. 
But she knew at once that this was death. 

1 His eyes were fixed on her mother’s face. And yet as he lay there, 
with that yearning gaze, she felt that he was floating away — away — 
and would soon be out of sight. He held her mother’s hand ; they 
saw rather than heard that he said: 

“ Have faith, dearest: cheer up.” 

“ 1 do, 1 do,” said Mrs. Sinclair, quite quietly and firmly now. 
“ Forgive me for having ever disturbed you with my selfish fears. 
God will make me strong. He will take care of us, and we will take 
care of each other. Don’t fear for us. We will come on quite 
safely, after you.” 

He made a little sign to Olive. She put her hand into her moth- 
er’s, and he folded his over both. They stood so tor some minutes. 
Then Mrs. Sinclair unclasped Olive’s fingers, and laid the dead man’s 





AT ANY COST, 




77 


hand gently down. She knelt beside him; her eyes still on his 
face. Olive turned away. It was not for her to speak to or touch 
her mother just then. She was in the hands of the great Consoler, 
whose presence seemed too real to be invisible! 

With a true instinct, though it is at variance with all the conven- 
tional customs of woe, Olive stole to the window and drew up the 
blind. The morning light was already in the sky, glowing on the 
old cathedral, ruddy even in its hoary eld. A bird started from its 
nesl in the eaves and tlew past the window with a cheery note. A 
sunbeam darted into the chamber, it fell athwart her father’s face 
and rested on her mother’s head. 

Mrs. Sinclair rose calmly. “We must send at once to Robert,” 
she said. “ Iiow terrible it will be tor him not to have been here! 
Olive, we must not let him get the blow from a cruel, bare telegram. 
Let us send the message to young Mr. Oliison, and so let the tidings 
reach the poor boy by a friend’s voice.” 


CHAPTER XII. 


ROBERT SINCLAIR DRIFTS. 


Robert started off on his long journey to the North, at the earliest 
possible opportunity after Tom took him the news of his father’s 
death. Tom furthered him in all his preparations in awed silence. 
Robert himself said very little, except “ How sudden it was! it took 
one quite by surprise, found one quite unprepared.” Tom replied 
that he believed it always did, however long it had been looked for. 
Robert” wondered if his father himself had expected it, and whether 
he had made any arrangements, and if so, what they were,” adding 
that there was little arrangement in his power to make. Tom re- 
marked that he knew his own father had made every arrangement, 
he had told him so himself , and Tom had got him to explain more 
fully sundry wishes he had expressed. 

On hearing this, Robert Sinclair had silently reflected that young* 
Oliison was more acute than some might think — one might have 
imagined that his feelings were too sensitive to allow him to probe 
deeply on such subjects. Robert could not dream that the “ ar- 
rangements ” Tom had so carefully sought did not so much concern 
the prospects of his own heirship as the pensioning of one or two old 
servants, the final provision tor an old horse, and llie disposal of the 
old chattels at Clegga, sacred in the son’s eyes because they had 
surrounded the married life of his dead mother. 

“I suppose you’ll bring Mrs. Sinclair and Olive back with you, 
Robert?” Tom had ventured to say. “ Perhaps your mother will 
like to return to Stockley — 1 should not be surprised at that.” 

“I can’t tell yet what will be done,” Robert answered, rather 
shortly. “ Of course, there are so many things to be taken into 
consideration.” 

After Tom had seen young Sinclair oft in the North train, as for 
the sake of speed he was to travel as far as possible by rail, Tom 
went into the underground railway station, to make his own way 
back to his duties in Penman’s Row. He had just missed a train, 



78 


AT AKY COST, 


and there was scarcely anybody on the platform but himself. As 
he stood alone there, absorbed in grave reflections, he was startled 
to hear his own name called, as it almost seemed, from the air, and 
in a voice, which, though he did not recognize it, had yet an un- 
mistakably familiar ring. As he looked around him in amaze, the 
call was repeated, accompanied by a light laugh. Hastily carrying 
his eyes down the platform, it rested on the gleaming colored crystal 
of the refreshment bar. Behind the counter stood a young woman, 
with her right hand eagerly held up 0 

Tom walked rather slowly toward her, wondering what she could 
want with him, and how she knew his name. The pink and white 
face set off by a fluff of yellow hair, and a pair of sparkling earrings, 
seemed quite strange to him. When, however, it brightened into a 
greeting smile, its identity dawned upon him. This was Kirsty 
Mail, strangely transformed indeed! Tom knew that she had carried 
out her intention of leaving Mrs. Brander’s service, and also that 
she had not fulfilled her promise of letting him know what became 
of her. * 

“ I beg your pardon for the liberty 1 took, Mr. Ollison,” said the 
girl, as he came up to her. “ But it is such a treat to see a Shetland 
face, and 1 know you are not too proud to have a good word for an 
old acquaintance.’ * 

Despite the affected humility of the words, Kirsty ’s tone was pert 
and her gaze was bold— there was a long distance and a wide experi- 
ence between this Kirsty, and the demure little maiden who had 
been Tom’s fellow-traveler. 

“ Well, Kirsty,” he said, “ I’m glad to see you; but 1 can’t say 
I’m glad to see you here.” 

Kirsty laughed hardly. “ Miss Chrissie Mail, if you please, Mr. 
Ollison,” she said. “ Kirsty is too familiar here. You see we young 
ladies get on in tiie world as well as you young gentlemen!” 

“ \ ery well. Miss Mail,” assented Tom. “So let it be. But 
what did your uncle think of the change in your course of life?” 

“ Oh, I suppose you’ve heard that grannie is gone at last?” Miss 
Mail asked in return. Mr. Ollison of Clegga had mentioned tnat 
fact in one of his letters to his son. “ Well,” she pursued, “ uncle 
and 1 had a fall out at that time. He wrote to me that he had had 
so much extra expense during her illness, that he thought 1 ought to 
help a little with her funeral. 1 told him I couldn’t. 1 really 
couldn’t, Mr. Ollison. I had not a sovereign of my own at the time. 
And men ought not to expect women to do that kind of thing.” 

‘‘Why not, Miss Mail?” asked Tom. “Among women’s 
* rights ’ have they no right to render love and duty?” 

Miss Mail tossed her" head. “ It’s very fine talking,” she said. 
“ May be I’d have done it it I could— 1 reckon I would — but don’t 
1 tell you 1 hadn’t a sovereign in the wide world?” 

“ But ought you not to have had one, and perhaps many more 
than one?” urged Tom. “ Poverty is no excuse, you know, if the 
poverty itself is inexcusable.” 

“ Uncle said something of that sort,” said Kirsty. “ It’s all very 
fine, Put you can’t expect a girl to be always saving and screwing. 
It’s little enough we can earn at the best, and we could scarcely get 
anything nice if it wasn’t given to us, and we often have to spend 


AT ANY COST. 


79 

some of our own money on our presents, before we can make them 
of any use to us. Uncle wrote me a scolding letter, and 1 never 
answered him, and don’t mean to.” 

“ But even if you were obliged to leave the Branders because you 
were unhappy with them, there were other houses where you might 
have got service, and have found things more pleasant, Kirsty,” 
pleaded Tom, relapsing into his old habit; “ 1 think it would have 
been well to bear ~a great deal rather than to enter the way of life 
you are in now.” 

“ Oh, well, Mr. Ollison, there are good and bad of all sorts,” said 
Kirsty. “ And 1 had got sick o’ domestic service. May be I’d 
looked at it from the wrong end, but so it was.” 

4 ‘ What put it into your head to take up this employment?” asked 

Tom. 

“ When my Cousin Hannah came from Edinburgh to London, she 
got a place at the bar of the Royal Stag,” narrated Kirsty, “ and 1 
used to go and see her there, and ihey used to let me be with her in 
the bar; and then the manager gave me an introduction to our firm 
here. I’m not defending all Hannah’s ways,” said the girl, evi- 
dently with some repressed recollection in her own mind. “But 
some has faults of one sort and some of another. One must take 
folks as one finds ’em; and Hannah’s always been kind to me. 
Somebody must do this sort of thing, and 1 don’t see why they’re to 
be despised. Mrs. Brander was very angry about my going to see 
Hannah at the Royal Stag. It wasn’t respectable and she couldn’t 
allow it, she said; and it was that we split over. 1 don't see the 
mighty differ between the likes of me going to visit Hannah serv- 
ing out the drams and gills over the counter’of the Royal Stag, and 
the mistress and Miss Etta going to visit the family of the great dis- 
tiller who supplied the gin and brandy to the cellars of the Royal 
Stag. And that was what they were always very glad to do. I ain’t 
saying a word against the gentleman,” added unthinking Kirsty, 
“ tor I know he gives a deal to charity, and has rebuilt the parish 
church. You won't deny that people must have food and drink, 
Mr. Tom; and so somebody’s got to give it ’em.” 

“ Providing for honest human wants is about the most honorable 
of human service,” said Tom. “ But what wants do you provide 
for?” He gave a significant glance over the few plates of uninviting 
pastry, and then over the goodly array of bottles and casks in the 
background. “ Is the underground railway so very unhealthy,” he 
asked with a sad humor, “ that the travelers on it must be so care- 
fully supplied with ‘ medicine ’?” 

Kirsty’s blue eyes fell— they were still pretty blue eyes, though 
they were fast becoming bold and vacant. 

“You are rather hard on us, Mr. Tom,” she pouted. “I’m sure 
1 do my best. There’s many a man whom 1 tell that he ought to be 
ashamed of himself for coming to me as often as he does— men that 
I’ve seen on the platform, at other times, with poor drudges of wives 
with ’em. And I’m quite sorry for some of the poor young fellows, 
for I do believe they take a glass just for the sake of having a little 
friendly chat with somebody!” 

“ But it is not that you may prevent drunkards from drimdng, or 
youths from forming drinking habits, that you are hired here,” said 


80 


AT ANY COST. 


Tom. “ Nor, 1 think, was it quite for that reason that you took this 
post. 5 ’ 

Kirsty ’s eyes fell lower — then she raised them in defiance. “ No, 
it wasn’t,’ ’ she answered. “ I’d made up my mind to have a hit of 
fun, and no hard work, and some nice clothes — and so 1 will — come 
what may!” 

“Has "Mrs. Brander learned where you are? Has she ever in- 
quired after you since you left her house?” asked Tom. 

Kirsty laughed again, that hard, bitter laugh which he had no- 
ticed at the very first. “ Not she!” she replied. “ She never asked 
where 1 was going when she saw my boxes being put on the cab. 
But what do I care? 1 hear about her, though. I can hear as much 
as 1 like about their house. Wouldn’t they be mad if they only 
knew?” 

“ How is that?” Tom inquired. But Kirsty only tossed her head 
significantly, and was at that moment called aside to attend on a 
customer, whose complimentary badinage seemed to Tom so insult- 
ing that he could hardly realize that Kirsty, by choosing to stand 
where she did, had deprived him of the right to knock down the 
fellow who dared so to address his old neighbor. “ Miss Ohrissie,” 
however, was only smiles and graciousness. And Tom waited no 
longer than to give her the last Shetland news— the tidings of Mr. 
Sinclair’s death, and to hastily exhort her “ if ever he could be of 
service to her,” to remember that his address was in Penman's Row. 

And while Tom went back to his duties, sorrowfully thinking 
what a tangle this world is, and how much pitiful excuse there is 
for the errors and follies of others-, and how little safety for our- 
selves, unless at every step of the way we look up for the guiding of 
an unseen hand, and down at the path for the footprints of the Mas- 
ter, Robert Sinclair was speeding away to the North, with his mind 
f ulf of many things. 

“ 1 must be prompt and decided,” he mused. “ My mother is a 
woman who is always easy to lead, unless her own mind is fully 
made up. They won’t be able to go back to Quodda. There will 
be a new schoolmaster in the schoolhouse, and I don’t know another 
house Into which they could put theii heads— they couldn’t live in 
a mere hovel, though of course they will have to cut their coat ac- 
cording to their cloth (and that would be narrow enough!), and my 
mother would make the best of whatever was needful.” So far, he 
thought, though silently, in words; but there was a reflection be- 
yond, which he left unexpressed, even to himself— a thought that 
since their poverty might be little beyond destitution, it would be 
well that they should not endure it in Shetland, where the Branders 
were almost sure to go, sooner or later. He had no! the remotest 
idea of what Tom had hinted — that the mother and sister should 
join him in the South and either live with him in London or near 
him in Stockley. “ If only my father had lived a few years longer!” 
he sighed. “ By that time, doubtless, I could easily have done for 
them everything 1 should like — without crippling myself. If one 
has to give away one’s first savings, how are they to increase so as 
to be of real service to one’s self?* It 1 managed to spare them thirty 
or forty pounds a year out of my little salary, how could I ever get 
on? It would not bt the mere pittance which 1 should sacrifice, it 


AT AKY COST. 


81 


would be all my prospects of any future wealth. If 1 could only get 
on unburdened for a few years, 1 should be able to give them 
enough and to spare !” 

Oh, how dangerous it is when future generosity looks so easy and 
delightful, while present duty seems so hard as to be impossible; 
when we think of what we will do, when certain circumstances 
have come to pass, and not of what we can do in the existing neces- 
sity! And we forget that the changes to which we look forward 
will be more searching than we contemplate — that when the fortune 
is made, the friend may be gone beyond mortal reach— that by the 
time our purse is full, our fingers may have got an inveterate habit 
of drawing its strings! 

When Robert had reached his mother and sister, he found that 
they had been proceeding, firmly and bravely, with all the matters 
in hand. They had chosen the father’s grave under the shadows of 
St. Magnus. It seemed to Mrs. Sinclair a kindlier resting-place than 
the bleak upland graveyard at Quodda would have been. “There 
are trees here,” she said to Olive, looking dreamily at those growing 
round the ruins of the earl’s palace and the bishop’s house, and 
thinking of the ancient avenue in Stockley church, down which she 
had walked on her wedding morning. They had bought their sim- 
ple and scant stock of mourning, and were already making it with 
their own hands. 

“ You should not have allowed mother to do such a thing, Olive,” 
Robert said, almost angrily. “ She is not taking much heed to any- 
thing just now, but everybody will think us most cruel and regard- 
less to permit it.” 

Olive looked up, surprised. “ I don’t think this is the sort of 
thing that hurts mother,” she said quietly. She herself did not feel 
the more comforted since her brother’s arrival, as she had looked to 
be. “ Somehow, Robert seems outside the circle where the sorrow 
is,” she pondered, “ and it seems to me that it is only those who are 
inside it that can console each other.” 

By and by, it might have been noticed that what the three debated 
over together, the mother and daughter rediscussed when alone. 
Of course, they could not go back to Quodda; they felt that Rob- 
ert’s wish was that they should not return to Shetland. They de- 
cided that they would not do so. Robert never asked them whether 
they would wish to be near him. They said not a word about this 
to each other. They only said that it might be best if they remained 
where they were for the present. Living would not be costly in 
Kirkwall. It would not be a great expense to get a few of the old 
household gods shipped to them from the more northern island; 
probably the incoming schoolmaster might take over the others at a 
valuation. No definite suggestion came from Robert. His hints 
were always negative. 

One or two old friends came from Shetland for the funeral, among 
them Mr. Ollison from Clegga. They hinted, in their homely, kind 
way, that they hoped there was “ something for the widow.” Yes, 
Robert said, he Was thankful to say that his father had made a cer- 
tain provision by insurance. (He did not say how small it had nec- 
essarily been!) And he himself was doing very well, and he hoped 
soon to be doing better. He added that rather proudly, as if he re- 


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AT ANY COST. 


sented any inquiry; at least, so the old men thought. They had 
not been unprepared to render a little help, if they could have done 
so in their own neighborly fashion. “ But it is a right spirit in the 
young man to be so independent,” they said to each other. “ And 
it leaves the more neighborly help for such widows as have not such 
children of their own.” And one of the old gentlemen, who at 
times made little investments in stocks and shares, resolved that for 
the future he should patronize the office which enjoyed the benefit 
of Robert’s services. “ There may not be much profit on my busi- 
ness,” said he, “ but it will do the young man good with his em- 
ployers, when they see that his old neighbors have such a good opin- 
ion of his principles and abilities.” 

Robert returned to London, highly satisfied with himself. Every- 
body had told him what a comfort it was to them, for his mother’s" 
sake, to know of his existence. Well, of course, he would do some- 
thing the moment the insurance money was used up; they must 
make that last as long as they could, certainly; and by that time, he 
would know better ” where he was.” Had he not already made one 
or two little speculative investments, which, if they turned out well, 
would at once realize what would have seemed a fortune in his eyes 
three years ago, but which he now characterized as ‘‘a nice little 
windfall?” (Did he notice how liis financial vision was changing?) 
It would have been wasting his “ opportunities ” had he failed to 
make those investments. It would be ruin now to disturb them. 
Ho, no; everything would end well for everybody. He had not 
taken his mother and Olive into his confidence, because women 
knew nothing about business. They ought to feel they could trust 
him in any case. And from the first, the world would treat them 
very differently from what it would if he was not in existence. 

And then he fell into a reverie over a true history he had once 
heard. It was the history of a poor artist, the only son of a gentle 
but decayed family. His early works had given great promise, 
which his later ones did not fulfill. People had said he worked too 
much; that he seemed almost to grudge the necessary appliances for 
the proper practice of his art, and diet not seek the inspiration and 
culture he might have got from travel and from the masterpieces of 
other minds; that he seemed not to care to risk rising to the height 
of his own genius, but was content to toil on level lines, which 
brought him safe profit. He had been called mercenary and sordid. 
His mother had spoken of him as if he had sadly disappointed her; 
it had been discovered that his sisters did not trouble themselves, 
even to go to see his pictures. People had pitied the mother and 
sisters for their withered hopes, whose fruition might well have 
lifted them out of the narrow life of elegant leisure and genteel 
economies into one of affluence and influence. Then the mother and 
sisters had dropped away, dying not long after each other. Then it 
had been noticed that ihe brother’s stream of merely saleable work 
grew slack; that he treated himself to some traveling and to some 
leisure, the result of which was a picture, which presently made his 
name. People said that all this was the beneficial consequence of 
his entering on lbs mother’s little fortune, and one or two got so far 
as to hint that, under all the circumstances, she might surely have 
made some self-denying arrangements in his favor during her life- 


AT AKY .COST. 83 

time. One acquaintance bolder than the rest had ventured to ask, 
“ How much he had inherited?” And the artist had quietly an- 
swered, “ Only about one hundred and fifty pounds a year, but. the 
sense of security and of relief from constant responsibility was the 
real blessing,” and he had been judged a poor-spirited creature to 
have had so little courage to fight the battle of life on his own ac- 
count. And it was only after he was dead, when his one or two 
bosom friends were at liberty to speak out, that the general public 
learned that from the very first, those leisurely critical women had 
been dependent upon him for every morsel of bread they put into 
their mouths, and that all he had “ inherited ” had been the cessa- 
tion of the need for supplying their wants, and of the fear lest he 
might fail to provide for their future. 

“ That man was a fool,” decided Robert Sinclair. And, perhaps, 
he was; but there is some folly which is nearly divine, as there is 
some seeming wisdom which is altogether devilish. It was a pity 
that true story should have had any existence, so that it could come 
into Robert Sinclair’s mind just then. He did not accept it as any 
guiding for himself. He was not yet base enough to think that 
without discretion and reserve on his part, Mrs. Sinclair and Olive 
might develop into such chill vampires as the artist’s family. But 
the story had its influence nevertheless. The selfishness of those 
dead women’s lives had left its pernicious trail behind them. From 
every life — nay, from every event in every life— there is distilled an 
essence — a medicine or a poison to be the blessing or the bane of the 
lives or the events which follow. And while some have the pre- 
cious legacy of their life’s wine poured out in loving service, and 
others the strange bequest of their life’s wine turned to vinegar by 
its reservation for themselves, there are yet others who drop a 
strange and subtle poison, which falling often into the most gener- 
ous wine poured out by their contemporaries, chills and impover- 
ishes it, and even gives a taint which may prove deadly to some. 
And it there be woe to those who have lived for themselves alone, 
and who leave the world poorer and not richer, for their having been 
in it, surely there must be woe, woe — a thousand times woe!— for 
those who have so lived that they have made the unselfishness of 
others seem folly — and have stamped the nobility of self-forgetful- 
ness as mere madness! For the former only lay waste (lie plains of 
earth, but the latter poison the well-springs of heaven. 

Olive Sinclair went back to Shetland alone to select and carry 
away such remnants of the old home as she and her mother might 
venture to keep. The “ merchant ” at Wallness undertook to con- 
vey these in his cart from Quodda to Lerwick, and to ship them to 
Kirkwall in a little vessel he used for his own trading purposes. He 
seemed at first to have curious hesitancy about undertaking the 
business, but in the end he named a charge for it which gave him a 
very fair profit. 

“ I would not have taken any money at all if it had been from 
the old lady and the lassie,” he remarked afterward, “ but there’s 
the young fellow to the fore, doing so well everybody says, and 
hand and glove with that Brander of St. Ola’s, who is screwing all 
he can out of us.” 

Olive paid the money. She thought the charge ample, but she 


84 


AT A1STY COST. 


made no observation, though she could not help remembering many 
a difficult account which her father had cast, and many a tangled 
correspondence which he had unraveled in quite a friendly way, for 
the old merchant in bygone days. 

Then she said good-by to all the simple neighbors. The expres- 
sions of their sympathy concerning the sad changes in the family, 
and of their congratulation concerning her brother’s future, were 
alike received rather silently. She had never been very popular in 
Quodda, though everybody had always thought her clever— far 
more clever than Robert. “ If she had been the boy instead of the 
girl she would have done wonders,” they said to each other, watch- 
ing the cart as it drove away, with Olive seated behind her house- 
hold gods; looking, not back at the villagers, but out upon the blue 
sea and the familiar rocks. 

“ 1 don’t feel as it I could work for myself,” she thought. “ But 
I can work for mother. And I suppose that is the way God always 
spares one something to give one strength! And if father thought 
too well of everybody else, why, there’s only the more need that I 
should justify his faith in me.”" 

And then, in their lodging in Kirkwall, the mother and daughter 
began that sort of life whose story is never fully written. They 
went out of the temporary furnished lodgings in which Mr. Sinclair 
had died, but they did not require to leave the house. The land- 
lady, a poor widow herself, found them an empty attic, low-roofed, 
and queer-cornered, for which she w r ould ask but a humble rent. 

“ One room will do for us in the meantime,” observed Mrs. Sin- 
clair. “ Robert will take a holiday to come so far north very soon, 
and by then we may have got on to something better.” 

“ One room will do for us in the meantime,” responded Olive, but 
she echoed her mother’s speech no further. 

At first, while Olive was looking tor work they had to make some 
inroad on the insurance money. But that inroad Olive was deter- 
mined should not long continue. She got a little daily teaching, 
which brought in a few weekly shillings, barely sufficient to pay for 
their food. Then she got an evening engagement to Keep a trades- 
man’s ledgers; this bi ought in a monthly stipend which would just 
meet the rent. Early in the morning, late at night, and in the inter- 
vals between her teaching and her book-keeping, she toiled at knit- 
ting and at white seam. The gains of such labors were indeed in- 
finitesimal, but they must not be despised, because they were needed. 
She found out what economy means when it has to be exercised, 
not in cash but in kind. At Quodda school-house, despite the 
chronic scarcity of money, there had always been a certain humble 
affluence; nobody had had to study how much the} 7, could afford to 
eat, or whether they might put another peat on the fire. But now 
she knew T where to "draw a line far within the limit of her healthy 
young appetite, and she learned how to make up a peat fire, not so 
as to get the most warmth from it, but so as to maKe it last the 
longest. 

Yet it is only when we get down to these barren places of life that 
we find how rich their soil really is, if only it be properly developed. 
Olive began to discover that the midnight moonlight and the ruddy 
dawn have a secret of their own, which they keep only for those cyesi 


AT ANT COST. 


85 


which rest on their beauty awhile, when hard work is over, or ere 
hard work begins. She began to feel as if she had private rights in 
the grand old cathedral on which her little window looked. 

“ What should we do without St. Magnus, mother?” she would 
ask cheerily. “ How good it was of all those unknown men in the 
dark ages to rear its beauty for our delight? And 1 believe they did 
it all the better, that 1 don’t suppose they thought much of poster- 
ity, but rather of the worship of God, and of doing a good day’s 
work tor those they loved.” 

Olive found, too, that when one gets down on a level with the 
poorest, so that they trust one with the real secrets of their life, one 
finds that there is a good deal of Spartan endurance and of quiet 
self-sacrifice still going forward in the world. 

In after yeais Olive^Sinclair did not find those days of strain and 
stress at all bad to remember. She used to say then, that she be- 
lieved by the time she was an old woman she would be chiefly inter- 
esting on account of what she could tell of that period. 

But then memory, with its curious alchemy for extracting pleas- 
ure from pain, always rejects pain from which pleasure cannot be 
extracted. The true suffering of those hard days was that, during 
their course, Olive felt as if she could plant no cheerful hope in any 
“ after years,” could foresee nothing but one long course of lonely, 
ill-requited, unremitting toil, uncheered b}^ sympathy or apprecia- 
tion. There was no possibility of saving, it was as much as they 
could do to pay their way, scanty as were their needs; a few evil days 
would plunge them at once into debt — either to Robert or to some- 
body — and Olive soon began to feel that it would be almost more gall- 
ing to accept aid even for her mother from him than from strangers; 
to think, too, that such a feeling was very unnatural, and that she 
must be very wicked to indulge in it. And yet why? Musttheie 
not ever be a deadly bitterness in taking alms from those whose 
justice would have saved us from need for them? As for any am- 
bitions of her own, even the laudable one of providing for her own 
future, for the helpless old age that must come at last alter fbe long- 
est life of toil, Olive soon realized that she must harbor none. 
“ Perhaps Robert will keep me then out of charity,” she thought, 
still not without some bitterness, “ and perhaps he will have a wife 
who will look askance at me for needing help, and will give me an 
old dress and a moral lecture.” And Olive was right enough in her 
keen judgment of the way of the world, though she blamed herself 
for the edge of her words. For with those who think that to be 
lucky and rich is in itself to be meritorious, to be poor from what- 
ever cause or course of events is to be disgraceful, he who like Jack 
Horner, 

“Puts in his thumb and pulls out a plum, 

And cries, ‘ What a good boy am I,’ ” 

is sure to agree with the poet’s new style “ Northern Farmer,” 

“ That the poor in a loomp is bad.” 

At other times, Olive would look bravely forward to the very 
workhouse itself. “ If one has to go there after one has done one’s 
very best, one does not need to blush for one’s self, but for the 


86 


AT ANY COST. 


world,” she reflected. These somber meditations were reserved for 
herself alone; for her mother she had only bright announcements of 
her latest triumph in the way of earning or sparing. 

Letters reached them from Tom Ollison of teher ^han from Robert 
Sinclair. Tom had written a frank and friendly letter in response 
to the telegram which had intrusted him with news of the father’s 
death, and the correspondence had continued since. His epistles 
were the one breeze from an active prospering outer life, which 
stirred the two women’s monotonous days. Airs Sinclair rejoiced in 
the coming of those letters, because they gave her some assurance 
of her son's welfare, though when Tom’s allusions to Robert 
seemed rather curt and guarded, she often feared lest Tom 
had seen that he was looking ill or over-worked, and was 
keeping something back. And so in truth Tom was, but it was not 
what she dreaded. Little as young Ollison knew how it really was 
with Airs. Sinclair and her daughter, he felt an instinctive reluc- 
tance to tell them of Robert’s social progresses; of the dinner parties 
he constantly attended, where his dress and appointments were of the 
most irreproachable; of the little suppers he gave among the young 
brokers and their more youthful clients, foolish youths of fashion 
who were fain to hope to meet their extravagances by dabbling a 
little in speculation, and of whom therefore “ something might be 
made.” Tom had been asked to several of these little suppers and 
had gone— once. 

Probably, despite these seeming extravagances, Robert Sinclair’s 
expenditure was not large, it was only made exclusively for what in 
his eyes was his own benefit. Tom could not understand Robert. 
His habits seemed steady, he drank little, he held, somewhat aloof 
from the fast talk of the men whom yet he gathered about him — per- 
haps gaining weight with them by so doing. He made an outward 
profession of religion. But all his being was absorbed in one thought, 

“ that of “ getting on.” The scramble seemed but to grow fiercer, the 
nearer he got to the goal of fortune: but then, alas! fortune has no 
goal — it ever recedes, often only to vanish in thin air at last. 

Tom said to Robert more than once, concerning his thoughts, his 
ways, and his friends, were these true, were those quite upright, were 
the friends worth} 7 ? Robert did not say much in self-defense. He 
only persisted in the thoughts and the ways, made more fiiends of 
the same sort, and saw less of Tom. Life is full of such separations. 

Olive marked her mother’s rapidly aging face. She noted that her 
mother spoke less than of old. She would sit in silence for hours 
now, and her loving manner toward her daughter changed to one of 
absolutely supplicating clinging. It seemed to Olive sometimes as 
if her mother was actually asking her pardon for still loving the son, 
who showed so little love-in return! 


CHAPTER Xllt. 

A SECRET HISTORY. 

During one of the conversations which Robert and Tom had 
together, soon after the return of the former from the North, young 


AT ANY COST. 87 

Sinclair said, ratlier suddenly, and apropos to nothing which had 
gone before: 

“ Tom, do you know anything particular about your Mr. Sandi- 
fon?” 

Tom Ollison looked up at him, with a quick, puzzled glance. The 
question seemed to have a strangely familiar ring about it — as if he 
had heard it before — an experience which we have all ol us known, 
and which has given rise to many elaborate theories concerning the 
action of the dual brain, and to more startling ones about pre-exist- 
ence. Probably such experiences are generally to be attributed to 
nothing more than a sudden quickening, by some new combination 
of circumstances, of some old line of thought and feeling, and our 
memory is not of the word or action which seems to stir it, but of 
a recurring mood of our own. 

At least, Tom Ollison quickly realized that it was so in the pres- 
ent instance. A minute’s reflection convinced him that what he 
really remembered was his own feeling of conjecture and bewilder- 
menl when Mr. Sandison himself had asked: 

“ Tom, did your father ever tell you anything about me?” 

And just as he had answered then, “ No, sir, except that he told 
me what great friends you had always been,” so he loyally answered 
now: 

“No, Robert — except that he is very much better than his words 
— and 1 have an idea that in this world that is very * particular,’ and, 
indeeed, ‘peculiar!’ ” 

” Ah,” said Robert, and shook his head, going on mysteriously, 
* ‘ 1 suppose he does not like it spoken about. Perhaps some rebellion 
against his destiny accounts for his atheism.” 

Tom did not ask what” it ” was. He always bitterly repented of 
having confided Grace’s assertion to Robert. It was not so much 
that he yet doubted its truth, in the bald, material sense of a fact. 
But since those early days he had himself been down into the depths 
— into depths from which he felt he could never have risen, but for a 
clinging childlike faith that God was with him even there, and had 
hold of him even in the dark, and that God knew and believed in Tom 
Ollison, while Tom Ollison could not know or believe in God ! And, 
suppose Tom Ollison had been still in those depths, would God have 
grown tired of him and let him drop? Perish the idea! Then, too, 
in rising out of these depths, Tom had scrambled back to the brink 
whence he had fallen; that would be no salvation from any Slough 
of Despond. God had brought him out, like the Psalmist of old, 
into “a wealthy place,” upon the richer soil nearer the Celestial 
City. Tom could say his creed again, now, firmly and joyfully, feel- 
ing, indeed, that he had never believed it before; but then it did not 
mean to him quite the same which it bad meant in the days when 
he had thought he believed it, and would have argued stoutly in 
defense of its very words. (The alphabet is not the same to us, after 
we have learned to read, as it is when we are learning its letters.) 
Atheism was not now to him the frightful mystery which it is to 
those who seem to fear that God’s existence may be endangered if 
it should ever be denied by the majority of His children, who can only 
live and move and have their being in Him as He in them. He now 
saw man as related to God, in the deepest part of his nature, as he is 


88 


AT ANY COST. 


in his bodily existence to air and earth and fire and water ; and he 
sa w that by them man breathed and ted, and was warmed and re- 
freshed, bet ore he could articulate their names, and even if he was 
so blind or so idiotic that he could not see or comprehend them. 
Tom could recognize atheism and infidelity as the spiritual icono- 
clasts of the world, even as the Juclaism and Mohammedanism had 
been its idol-breakers, emptying shrines ot maimed or distorted im- 
ages, to make way for the living form of the God-man. That mem- 
ory ot his own good father tenderly tending him through the loolish 
rage of delirium had stood Tom in good stead again and again. God 
could never disown His children whodidflot love Him, because they 
did not know Him, or could not see His face. His other children 
could only love Him the more for such pain and such patience! 
And as for Peter Sandison, was there not perpetual prayer in those 
pathetic eyes of his?— and for what were they ever seeking, if not 
for God Himself? 

Tom Ollison was glad of one thing: that, even in those early 
days, wherein one is so tempted to repose confidences in those with 
whom we are already familiar, concerning those who are still 
strangers, he had never yielded to the temptation to tell Robert of 
the sealed leaves of the Sandison Bible, or of the strange inoccupancy 
and desertion of the best rooms of the Sandison house. The latter 
fact did not seem to have struck Robert, whose brief visits had been 
quite naturally passed in the dining-room and in his friend’s own 
apartment. 

Robeit observed that Tom allowed his last remark to pass without 
response, and he drew an unfavorable inference from it. * Probably 
Tom was getting “ queer ” himself. Well, there was really so 
much free-thought among the members of the learned societies in 
whose libraries Toni’s life work lay, that perhaps such a reputa- 
tion might be good for him rather than bad; but still it was a pity, 
considering how Tom had been brought up. 

However, Robert said nothing on this subject. Perhaps he was 
all the more eager to proceed with his news, because Tom manifested 
so little cuiiosity. 

“ Well, of course, you Know that Mr. Sandison came from Shet- 
land,” he narrated, “ and, perhaps, though he was such a friend of 
your father’s, that is all .you do know. It is wonderful how much 
we all take for granted, especially concerning our elders. But 
when 1 was in the north this time, the old men who came to my 
father’s funeral, in their natural desire to know all about things in 
London, let fall expressions which let me know that there was a 
mystery somewhere, and once I had got as far as that, be sure 1 lost 
no time in getting as far as 1 could go. So you really have not 
the least idea that Peter Sandison is no Shetlander, except by re- 
pute, and that he has no better right to the name he bears?” 

” 1 only know that he and my father were friends from their earli- 
est years, and that one of my first memories is of hearing his name 
mentioned with respect at Clegga.” Tom spoke with a coldness 
quite foreign to his usual manner. He wished to check Robert’s 
communications, yet he would not absolutely silence him, lest it 
should seem as if he feared what might’ be said. 

Robert went on. “ They say he was brought to the island in a 


AT AHY COST. 


89 


ship, when he was a baby, and was given in charge of the old 
couple, who provided him with a name and a starting-point in life. 
One of the old men said that Peter Sandison had been a very dashing, 
eager sort of boy, but that a great change came over him after his 
foster parent’s death. It was thought that then he first discovered 
the secret ol his birth.” 

Tom said nothing. He was Bilently adjusting this new fact beside 
many an old one. Robert went on. 

“ Then they say there was a rumor that he had another terrible 
come-down in London, years after. They had only a vague story of 
that, without names or dates, gathered from the reports in home 
letters of other Shetlanders in the metropolis. They said that he 
had fallen in love with a young lady, who was supposed to be 
rather above him in circumstances; not that she had any money of 
her own, they said, but she was the daughter of some Government 
pensioner, and she made poor Peter understand that it wouldn’t be 
nice on his part to take her from her genteel home, and turn her 
into a wife and a general servant all at once. I dare say she made 
him believe that, for her own part, she was ready with any angelic 
sacrifice for his sake,” laughed Robert;, with the manner of one 
w T ho knows the wiles of the sex— the easy confidence of the serpent 
charmer, who will not be bitten! 

“Well?” said Tom Ollison, with a sharp note of interrogation. 
Robert Sinclair's mirth jarred and fretted him. As he would tell 
this story, let him hasten to its end. 

“Well,” echoed Robert, quite complacently, “that happened 
which might have been expected to happen. While Peter Sandison 
was toiling and moiling among his books and catalogues, laying 
shilling to shilling, and pound to pound, a certain smart fellow, 
who knew both of the courting couple, dashed into a bold specula- 
tion, made his fortune, and carried off the lady’s heart. It was 
only a modern version of the old ballad, don’t youTrnow, 

“ ‘ Let him take who has the power, 

And let him keep who can !’ 

They say she made excuses that she was beginning to have" doubts 
about Peter— she thought that some of his views were queer, and 
that perhaps it was risky to trust herself to a man with so doubtful 
an origin. But of course one can see what all that was worth. 
Well, 1 don’t blame her. It is easy to blame people. But we must 
each do the best for ourselves, and a woman’s marriage is always 
her best or her worst bit of business. She hasn’t markets every 
week.” 

What could Tom Ollison say? All the true romance of his pure 
youna heart was up in arms against such a defilement and desecra- 
tion of life’s sweetest sanctities. And yet by this time he fully 
realized that to argue over them with Robert Sinclair would be 
worse than useless, would only lead to further desecration, like a 
struggle in a church with one who has insolently spat on its altar 
steps. And every nerve of his warm, true nature was tingling in 
sympathy with Peter Sandison. Atheist, was he? If so, then 
whose was the root of the blame? The beloved disciple had perti- 
nently asked, “ He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 


90 


AT ANY COST. 


liow can be love God, whom lie bath not seen?” Was it a grievous 
perverting of Scripture tor Tom (o feel that in the very spirit ol that 
question another might be asked, “ He who finds no ground for faith 
in his brother whom he hath seen, how can he have faith in God 
whom he hath not seen?’' 

Oh! how glad he was to think that at the very beginning he had 
not been tempted to swerve from his allegiance to his father's friend, 
even for that bright, peaceful Stockley ltfe which Robert had held 
so lightly. But while he pondered, Robert went on again. 

“ The old fogies told me all this news quite simply — just as they 
knew it. They could supply no dates, no margin narrower than a 
decade. Nor did they know the names of this false lady and her 
successful lover. The beauty of it was that 1 saw directly that 1 
could supply both. They only gave the other half to a halt story 
1 half knew before. But as they never dreamed of that, 1 got off 
without any suspicious questionings. Does nothing strike you, 
Tom? Don’t you see through this?” 

“No,” said Tom stubbornly; “I only hear all you have told 
me.” 

“ But don’t you feel a clew? You must surely have heard some- 
thing on which this throws a light? Do }mu know, I should not 
have been a bit surprised if you had taken the wind out of my sails 
by telling me you knew all about this long ago. Do you mean to 
say you cannot give a guess as to the identity of the nameless 
parties in my tale? Try.” 

“I am not going to try,” said Tom. “ 1 shall know when 1 am 
told. Guessing on such subjects is an unjustifiable throwing about 
of mud, and then some may stick on quite innocent people.” 

Robert was silent tor a few minutes, perhaps only because he was 
lighting a cigar. Probably it would have been quite impossible for 
him to trace the line of thought which carried him on to his next 
remark. 

“ Have you heard anything of Kirsty Mail since she left the 
Branders’ service?” 

For Tom had never told him of his chance encounter with her at 
the railway refreshment buffet on the day when Robert went to the 
North. Tom could scarcely have told whether his silence on the 
subject had been instinctive or intentional. He told him the facts 
of the case now, as briefly and baldly as possible. 

Robert puffed his cigar for a minute. “ That girl will come to no 
good,” he decided. “She was one of those who will have their 
pleasure and their leisure at any cost. If 1 had told all I knew, she 
would have been out of the Branders’ house long before she was.” 

“ If you thought she was going wrong you should have spoken to 
somebody,” said Tom. “Even Mrs. Brander herself,” he added 
rather faint-heartedly; “though she might have discharged her, 
might have kept an eye on her, or have interested those in her who 
would have done so.” 

Robert shook his head. “ Not likely,” he observed easily. “ And 
besides, it does not do to mix one’s self up with these matters. It 
isn’t understood. II one does so, people think there is something 
at the bottom of it. And before one knows where one is there is a 


AT ANT COST. 91 

mysterious rumor floating about one. And it mil turn up some day 
to do one damage, when and where one least expects it.” 

“ Well, good-by now, Robert,” said Tom quite suddenly, unable 
longer to endure his companion’s mental and moral atmosphere. It 
had never before occurred ta him that probably the self-condemned 
accusers of the sinful woman in the New Testament had barely 
crept away from the presence of her and her merciful Master before 
they began to whisper innuendoes against Him whom they had left 
speaking to her with kindly courtesy. It is scarcely in early youth 
that we discover that society, like the air, is filled with floating 
matter, ready to settle everywhere, and to convert wholesomeness 
into poison. So while we hermetically seal the food we wish to 
preserve, let us consider the wisdom which directed that the right 
hand should not know what the left hand did, and which was feign 
to seal every good deed with secrecy—” See thou tell no man.” 

That very afternoon Tom availed himself of a leisure hour to go 
to the railway station, in the hope of seeing Kirsty, and of making 
some apppal to her better feelings and good sense. 

He found another ” young lady ” at the refreshment buffet. This 
one had black hair and bold black eyes, with which she stared at 
him for a full minute before she answered his quiet inquiry after 
“ Miss Mail.” 

“ Miss Mail?” she echoed, “ Miss Chrissie?” with a mocking em- 
phasis on the abbreviated name. “Oh! we don’t know anything 
of her here, and don’t want to. She’s gone— not too soon. She 
W’as a bad lot.” 

Tom felt his face grow hot under the girl’s cruel glance. 

” She had a cousin, barmaid at the Royal Stag,” she went on. 
” That one took to robbery— at least a man she knew did, a man 
that had run away from Edinburgh with her, and she was put into 
the dock with him, only they let her off. 1 don’t say your Miss 
Chrissie did anything in that style, but she lost her place here 
through her carrying on, and when the man go! his sentence 1 sup- 
pose the two girls went off together. Nobody has heard of ’em 
since.” 

Tom turned and went back to Penman’s Row. By that time it 
was twilight; and it seemed to him that at every corner he saw a 
face and heard a laugh which might have belonged 1o Kirsty Mail. 


CHAPTER X1Y. 

IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT. 

And so for years, while Olive Sinclair toiled and spared in the 
old attic in Kirkwall, and while her mother waited and prayed and 
sealed her yearning maternal love in a gentle silence, the life of the 
two young men in London advanced steadily up the grooves which 
each had found for himself. Tom Ollison saw his father several 
times, but not by his going to Shetland, or by the old gentleman 
coming up to London ; they agreed to break the long journey for 
each oilier by meeting at Edinburgh, which spared Tom the sea 
voyage tor which he had little leisure, and saved the father from 
traveling on ” those railway lines ” which, despite their smoothness, 


92 


AT ANY COST. 


lie mistrusted far nitre than the roughest waves of his own North 
Sea. Once indeed, Tom went to Shetland. He did not stop in 
Kirkwall, except on his return journey while the vessel in which he 
journeyed lay in dock to take in passengers and cattle. Mrs. Sin- 
clair and Olive came down to the shore to see him, and to exchange 
a few friendly words during the brief interval. It pained Tom to 
see how the schoolmaster's widow had become quite an old lady, 
with silvery hair smoothed beneath her black bonnet, and with pain 
and patience writ large on her sweet and mobile face. But what an 
interesting woman Olive had grown! rallier too slight perhaps, but 
gaunt no longer. What fine lines had come out in her countenance! 
What a wonderful light there was in her eyes! Tom only wished 
he could have prolonged his stay. Yet though there was nothing 
in the neat black garments of mother and daughter to rouse in his 
masculine unconsciousness any suspicion of the hard life of struggle 
and privation which they were living, somehow he felt that he 
would not have much cared to enlarge on Robert’s career to them, 
and that perhaps it was w r ell he was limited to more general infor- 
mation as to the well-being and prosperity of the son and brother. 
But now that he had seen Olive Sinclair again, he felt he must see 
more of her, and to his dismay, he found that henceforth her 
friendly letters were no longer a welcome, temperate pleasure, but a 
longed-for, passionate delight! 

In those years, Tom’s life enlarged greatly in many ways. He 
went abroad more than once, deputed by Mr. Sandison to do work 
which had been offered to that well-known and respected, “ though 
eccentric ” bookseller and bookhunter. He lived a real life in those 
foreign cities, working amid their workers, and making friends 
among them. He was more than once at the great book-fair at Leip- 
sic. But he always came back, with an unspoiled heart, into the 
strange subdued life in Penman’s Row, and the hearty, homely so- 
ciality of the homely folk among whom he worshiped. 

Tom paid occasional visits to the Branders’, though the intervals 
between such visits grew ever longer. He could 111 brook to bear 
the ignorant contempt with which the whole family regarded the 
simple peasantry of his native island, from whom too, he knew by 
his father’s letters, every penny was being extorted and every right 
gradually withdrawn, and to whom were extended none of (lie 
amenities which once made feudal power a possible form of friend- 
ly protection. 

There were times when it almost dawned on Etta Brander’s dark- 
ened perceptions, that about this young man with his “ quixotic 
ideas ” there was something finer than about her father and Robert 
Sinclair. She even got so far once as to think to herself that tne 
world might be a pleasanter world if everybody was like him! Bud 
then it was no use to dream of what “ might be;” it was clear that 
the w r orld w'as full of quite another sort of people, and “ it was of 
no use to be singular.” She was inclined to pity Tom a little for 
the long hours which his work seemed to absorb, and for the nature 
of his recreations, the long country rambles or boatings on the river, 
solitary, or with some companion as hard-working as himself — the 
occasional game of cricket or quoits during his Saturday afternoons 
at his favorite Stockley. How different all these -were from the 


AT ANY COST. 


93 


gay, exciting diversions— the dances, the polo, the operas and the 
pigeon-shooting matches without which she felt she could not live! 
And yet young Mr Ollison never looked bored, as she constantly 
felt! Why, she even wearied so utterly of the monotony of travel- 
ing in Switzerland, that she got her father to push on to the South- 
ern gaming tables that sue might snatch the feverish delights of 
rouge-et-noir. Afterward she always said that she did not wonder 
that gentlemen enjoyed speculation!" 

Mrs. Brander did not make much demur over the transformation 
her daughter worked in the family sphere. She herself had been 
brought up in the straitest old fashion, not to dance, not to go to a 
play, not to read a novel. Some forgotten ancestor of hers had re- 
jected these things, perhaps in the days of public Maypoles, of the 
libertine Wycherley and of the notorious Mrs. Aphra Behn. For 
generations afteiward the family had walked blindly in that ances- 
tor’s footsteps, doing right (as far as it was right) wrongly, since 
they did it not on any principle, but because it was “ the custom” 
of the most select section of the “ respectable” society in -which they 
had been content to move in those days. But now things were 
changed. Mrs. Brander’s new friends were “ fashionable” and had 
other standards. So for these she quietly deserted her own. She 
did not honestly change them, as anybody may change any custom, 
even in sheer loyalty to the very principle which may underlie it. 
When she alluded to her changed social tactics, she did not say, 
“ Things are changed,” or “My views have changed.” She only 
sighed, “ The times are changed,” “ People think differently now- 
adays. ’ ’ 

She little knew that it was words of hers which put an end, finally, 
to Tom Ollison’s few-and-far-between visits to Ormolu Square. 

On that evening, she had first descanted long on the graces and 
accomplishments of Captain Carson, wdiom Tom had met there again 
and again. Long before this, Tom had known that the captain was 
the heir of the good Squire of Stockley, the unworthy heir, to whose 
advent into place, the Blacks, and ali the other old tenants, looked 
forward with dislike, and even terror; since the young man’s char- 
acter was of a kind calculated to check and destroy all the good in- 
fluence of preceding generations, while it had already betrayed him- 
self into the power of eager, mercenary men like Mr. Brander who 
would put every pressure on their weak and self-indulgent tool to 
force him to extort from his ancestral acres more rapid and showy 
gains than golden harvests and rosy orchards, and a race of loyal 
and honest men Already strangers had been seen about Btockley, 
who dropped suspicious hints concerning a big new public-house," a 
possible distillery, and plenty of speculative building, as facts loom- 
ing in that future which was only held back by the frail life of one 
aging man. Tom would have been ready to deduct a good deal of 
the evil report of the Stockleyites concerning young Carson as due 
to their fond clinging to a happy old regime , and their natural 
shrinking from a new and doubtful one. But Tom had not been 
lefl to form his opinion of the man from these alone. At that soli- 
tary supper of Robert’s at which Tom had putin appearance, he had 
heard Carson tell a foul story and crack a vile joke. His name had 
figured disreputably once or twice in the daily paper's, and was sel- 


94 


AT ANY COST. 


dom omitted from the suggestive chat of society journals. Mr 
Brandei did not disguise his own judgment of the man, especially 
of late, since the interests of his succession had been mortgaged,, as 
he said, “to the very hilt.” Nay, Mrs. Brander herself saw no 
necessity for disguising her knowledge that “ the poor dear captain 
had been very wild,” while she went on to say “ what perfect man 
ners he had, and how sweet his disposition seemed, and how she was 
quite sure his heart was thoroughly good at bottom.” 

Tom Oilison could not help thinking what different measure was 
meted to Captain Carson and 1o Kirsty Mail! But he knew that to 
draw any such parallel would seem to Mrs. Brander like insanitjr, 
and would be regarded by her as a personal insult. So wishing his 
words to carry some conviction, rather tban to merely relieve his own 
feelings, he only said: 

“ The more attractive such men as Captain Carson may be, the 
more pestilential are they in society.” 

Oh, now you are uncharitable!” cried the lady, “ we must al- 
ways hope for the best. I don’t believe the captain would harm a 
fly. There are so many temptations for men of rank and wealth 
that we must not judge them hardly. 1 believe the captain really 
aspires after better things. He told me that he rinds it a real treat 
to go sometimes to St.'Bevis’s church, it is so sweet to hear the 
trained choir singing in the dim, religious light. There is always 
hope for a man wiio is religiously disposed.” There she paused 
for awhile and then asked, “is it true, as Robert says, that your 
poor Mr. Sandison is an atheist?” 

Tom felt his face flush. Had his sacred, though rash, confidence 
been thus bandied about? 

“ Madam,” he said, “ 1 never heard Mr. Sandison name God.” 

“ Ah!” sighed the lady. “ i feared and foresaw that it would be 
so. And once it was so different. He thought and spoke a great 
deal of sacred things. And most reverently, too- or, of course, 1 
should not have allowed it. Only he permitted himself to think 
too deeply, and to venture to think in new ways, i foresaw how it 
Would end.” She sighed again, sentimentally, and then bending 
over her crewel-work, said, in a lower voice, “ He and 1 were once 
rather friendly. Poor, dear Peter! Without doubt, he has men 
tioned that to you, when he has heard of your visits here.” 

“ He never did so, madam,” Tom was glad to be able to reply. 
Tom had been unable to suppress sundry conjectures which Rob 
ert’s hints had aroused, but lie had never given them voice. “ He 
never mentioned that, madam. But when I said 1 had never heard 
him name God, I was going on to say, that had 1 gone into his house 
a pagan, 1 am sure 1 should have asked what God my master served, 
whose service made him so tender and true in his dealings with all 
men. Perhaps he has learned, may be, too bitterly, to trust words 
less and deeds more!” 

For many a little secret had Tom discovered to his master’s credit, 
as, for instance, he had come across the hotel bill for that Christmas 
dinner for the Shands which had aroused Grace’s ire (though even 
now he could not guess that the festivity had been first planned in 
kindliness to himself); and he had disco rered that the wheel and the 
Shetland prints had been bought to give the old attic a homely look 


AT ANY COST. 


95 


for his-eye. And was lie going to discuss the mute agonies of the 
noble soul which haunted Peter Sandison’s pathetic eyes, with this 
shallow dame, who fancied she had faith because she did not know 
that fail li is of the heart and of the life, and not of the lip? No, 
never. And from that da} 7- he never returned to Ormolu Square. 

Etta Brander and Robert Sinclair had been long openly engaged, 
and their approaching marriage was even being discussed by this 
time. Everybody regarded Robert as one of “ the most rising youug 
men in the city/’ He had made one or two very lucky hits. But. 
life was a hard and constant strain upon him, being, in one of its 
aspects, a gambling game, in which at any time much of the luck’ 
might set against him; on the other, a perpetual struggle to keep 
his resources up to the ever-rising water-mark of his ambitions, and ' 
the needs which grew out. of them. People told Etta that she was 
“ a very fortunate girl,” and Etta grew quite satisfied that to con- 
sult high art authorities on the furniture of one’s future home, and 
to invent aesthetic novelties for one’s trousseau, was vastly better 
than any idyllic love-in-a-cottage, though somehow all the poets and 
the painters seemed lo find the latter the better subject whereon to 
exercise their gifts, and she found it very nice to buy pretty pictures 
of people whom in real life she would only have pitied and patron 
ized. For her, there were few lovers’ confidences in the gloaming, 
few lovers' roamings in forest or on sea-shore, but she saw quite as 
much of Robert as she wished at the balls and dinner parties to 
which they were both invited. Etta’s own ambitions were growing 
daily, and as she knew that “ business ” meant means to gratify them, 
she never grudged to find '* business” her very successful rival 

“ Etta,” said one of her friends to her once, “ at one time, I half 
thought you were in love with that naughty Captain Carson?” 

“ Perhaps I was,” Etta calmly admitted. “ I think 1 liked him 
better than 1 ever liked any other man.” 

“ And yet — ” said the friend significantly. 

“ And yet 1 shall marry Robert Sinclair,” Etta answered; “ that 
is quite a different thing.” 

Etta had heard little— had asked nothing — about the mother and 
sister in the far North. “ They were living quietly in a cathedral 
town there,” she said. That had a pretty and an aristocratic sound. 
To do her justice, she knew .nothing more. Possibly Robert had 
encouraged her dislike to the thought of ever visiting those remote 
islands. Mr. Blander himself had gone to his northern estate sev- 
eral times, and had always returned in a bad temper, saying “he 
would be glad to wash his hands of the whole concern ; it was the 
worst investment he had ever made, he might as well have acted like 
an old woman, and put the money into consols!” 

It was just before Robert and Etta w r ere married, that one even- 
ing, as Mr. Sandison and Tom sat together at supper in the dining- 
room at Penman’s Row, Grace came in and announced, in her very 
sourest manner, that ” somebody had been a-calling for Mr. Ollison. 
But when the boy fetched me to her, 1 told her j^oii weren’t in, and 
I didn’t know when you would be in. ” Seeing Tom’s reproachful 
expression Grace went on, “ Well, 3 r ou weren’t in at the minute, 
though 1 knew you’d be home directly. But she wasn’t one of the 
sort to come about a decent house. 1 11 warrant she’ll come again, 


9G 


AT ANY COST, 


sharp enough* so 1 thought I’d let you know first, and you can tell 
me what is to be said to her.” 

“ AVho was she?” Tom asked. Old Grace could understand such 
questions by her eyes, though they did not reach her ears. " 

“ She was a bad one, whoever she was,” answered the old woman. 
“ Dressed in tawdry finery, with a fluff of yellow hair and blue 
eyes, a-crying and all in a fuss. Coming begging, of course, and mak- 
ing you believe she meant to reform!” 

“ Ivirsty Mail, at last!” exclaimed Tom, rising from his chair. 
“ And to think she has been sent away like this!” 

, Grace could see the young man’s agitation. She laughed in her 
dismal, cavernous way. “ Oh, that sort don’t kill themselves 
-often,” she croaked. “ And when so, maybe it’s the best thing they 
can do. I gave her a good piece of my mind.” 

“Woman!” said Mr. Sandison, “if there is no mercy in your 
heart, is there no reflection in your bosom which should teach you 
words and thoughts far different from these? If not, how can God 
Himself help you?” 

There was something awful in the master’s tone. It sent a strange 
thrill through Tom. It was neither loud nor angry, only unuttera- 
bly piercing and sad. The words could not have reached Grace’s 
deaf eais, scarcely even the voice, yet for the first time since Tom 
had known her, she quailed, visibly. Her sallow face blanched, and 
as it did so a weird youthfulness swept over it, and a wild light as 
of tear and defiance flashed in her black eyes. But they could not 
meet her master’s. Without another word, she sidled out of the 
room, as if from the presence of something which she feared to face, 
yet on which she dared not turn her back. 

Mr. Sandison rose from his seat. “ That poor soul, driven away 
from the door,” he said, in low solemn accents (lie knew all that 
Tom knew of the story of Kirsty Mail), “ where is she now? and 
what will be her thoughts of God to-night?” 

“ Wherever she is, God is with her,” said Tom quietly, “ and 
■whatever are her thoughts of Him, He has only loving thoughts of 
her. And surely,” he added, with a slow, gentle reverence, “He 
will marvel if, in a world where he sent His own Son in His own 
likeness, there are those who will mistake such as Grace Allan for 
any representative of Him.” 

Once again, Mr. Sandison threw T^om a quick, bright glance, like 
one of sudden and happy recognition. Tie did not say another 
word, but walked straight from the parlor, upstairs, and into his 
own room. 

Tom did not linger long behind. It struck him that he could no 
longer say he had never heard Mr. Sandison name God, and that he 
had now named Him, not as any unbeliever might, but from the 
standpoint of one who entered into His yearning love, defeated by 
human hardness, and who suffered, as a son might, to see his father 
misrepresented and misunderstood in his own family. And it struck 
Tom, too, that, tor the moment, it had not startled him to hear Mr. 
Sandison speak so, despite the belief he had held foi so many years 
concerning him, and the silence which had confirmed it. 

The three bedrooms of the establishment were all on the same 
highest landing, above the other flats of closed-up rooms. Grace 


AT ANY COST. 


97 

■was in her room already, but all there was darkness and silence. 
Mr. Sandison was in his; lie believed he had closed the door behind 
him, but the latch had slipped, and it stood slightly ajar. As Tom 
passed, he saw the master ot the house kneeling by his low bedside, 
his face buried in his hands. 

Tom crept by, with a blush on his face for his unintentional in- 
trusion. 

In the dead of the night he awoke suddenly. It seemed to him 
that somebody had passed down stairs. Yet the sound which had 
penetrated his slumber was scarcely that of a footstep, rather of a 
hand drawn stealthily along the outer wall, groping in the dark- 
ness. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE SECRET IN THE BIBLE. 

Tom Ollison’s half -dreamy conjecture had been right. In the 
middle of the night, Grace Allan, who had never been to bed, left 
her room, and stole down-stairs to the dining-room. 

There was something aroused in her which must be satisfied in 
one way or another, at any cost. What did Mr. Sandison know 
about her? Did he know anything? And if so, how had he 
learned it? And was there not something to know about himself t 
What lay between the sealed fly-leaves of the family Bible? 

She determined to risk anything to find that out. She did not 
hope to do so, and to escape detection in so doing. (She had already 
tried numberless times to do that!) No; she would be at the secret 
any how. After she once knew it, whatever it might be, probably 
Mr. Sandison would think thrice before he put her out of the house 
for her inquisitiveness, or before he again “cast up” against her 
what “ was none ot his business,” what he had no right to know, 
and that, after she had lived “ so respectably ” tor nigh fifty years! 
It was odd that deaf Grace, who had not heard one of her master’s 
words, had made out a bitter reproach where Tom Ollison had heard 
only a pathetic appeal! 

She went down into the parlor, still groping in the dark, found a 
candlestick, and got a light. 

Then she took the big Bible from its shelf, and laid it on the 
table. 

But somehow, a little hesitation seized her, as if she could not 
hasten to do what could never be undone. So she left the Bible 
lying closed, while she cleared the supper-table and tidied the apart- 
ment, as she usually did before going upstairs to bed, but had failed 
to do on the preceding evening. 

All this was only the delay of nervous irresolution. It meant no 
relenting change of mood. 

So, at last, she drew a chair to the table, and set down the candle 
beside her, a little spot of light in the surrounding gloom. Then 
she opened the Bible, and fumbled at the sealed leaves, with fingers 
which trembled strangely. 

How little do any ot us know when and how we shall take the 
judgment-book ot our own lives into our hands, and opening it, 

4 


98 


AT ANY COST. 


perhaps in pride and malice, to read the sentence of another, shall 
find instead the simple home-thrust — 

“ Thou art the man S’ ’ 

One seal was broken! So cleanly, too, that she almost thought it 
might be mended unnoticeably, and her heart beat faster with the 
thought that it she had such good luck with another, she might so 
repair the damage as to be possessed of “the truth ” about her 
master, without his knowing where she had found it. 

But that was not to be. The second seal smashed and fell in 
fragments. Yet she scarcely noticed that disappointment in the fact 
that the leaves were now so widely parted that sundry papers tell 
from them into her lap, and that she could also distinctly see be- 
tween them! 

They were both entirely blank! 

The secret then was among those loose papers. Eagerly she turned 
them over— one or two old letters, and a few dim and yellow cut- 
tings from prints. 

Then came a low, terrible, incredulous cry. For one moment the 
papers fell from her hands, but in another, she was wildly seeking 
some clew for their arrangement so as to get the whole narrative in 
its dreaded sequence. Each scrap of paper had a date written upon 
it, and how instinctively she seemed to know which was the earliest! 

This was a bit of old newspaper, thin in texture and weak in type, 
suggestive of old-fashioned provincial journalism. It was only a 
short paragraph, and it ran — 

“ last week, one evening, a Buchanness fisherman found a baby 
lying at the loot of the l^uller rocks. The child, a boy, had evi- 
dently been exposed for some time, as it was in a very suffering 
condition. The fisherman was directed to it by its cry, which he 
mistook at first for that of a.sea-bird. He carried the poor little 
waif home to his wife, and, to the credit of their humanity, they 
have resolved to take charge of it for the present. There is no clew 
as to those who must have so willfully and cruelly deserted the child. 
Only a lad reports that, in the early morning of the day when the 
baby was found, he met a strange woman, walking very fast, iu the 
direction of Ellon. He did not notice anything about her, except 
that her black shawl was fastened by a silver brooch, formed in a 
plain hollow circle, which caught his eye through the sun glancing 
on it as he passed her. His impression is that she was young and not 
tall.” 

(There was just such a silver brooch formed in a plain hollow 
circle, sticking in the pin-cushion in Grace Allan’s bedroom! She 
had worn it at her throat on the preceding evening.) 

This scrap of printed matter had been evidently inclosed in a let- 
ter bearing date two or three years later. As Grace hastily scanned 
its contents, she found this must have been written by the Buchan- 
ness fisherman to his sister, married and childless, in Shetland. It set 
forth that his own wife being dead, and he resolved ongoing to New- 
foundland, he purposed committing to the charge of her and her hus- 
band the adopted child of whom he had already written, and whom 
he vras sending to them by trusty hands, along with certain of his 
savings, which would assist in its maintenance until it could “ fend 
for itself/* 


AT ANT COST, 


99 


This letter was indorsed in Peter Sandison’s handwriting : * ‘ Found 
among the papers of my adopted parents after their death. first 
discovery of the truth/’ And the date was given. 

Then came a narrow printed slip with a date not long subsequent. 
This was only an advertisement offering reward or advantage of 
some kind to any person coming forward able to give any informa- 
tion whatever which might lead toward the discovery of the anteced- 
ents of a male child, found deserted amon^ the rocks of Buchan- 
ness, on such a day of such a year, and nelieved to have been 
deserted by a woman wearing a black shawl, with a silver circle for 
a brooch. 

This advertisement had apparently elicited one letter— the long 
and rambling letter of an uneducated person. But it was not too 
long or too illegible for Grace’s patience. 

It set forth that, years before, the writer, a seafaring man and a 
native ot Buchanness, having engaged for a voyage from one of the 
more southern seaports, had been leisurely journeying toward his 
port by easy stages, stopping with sundry relatives on the road; that 
he had thus stopped in Ellon; that while there, chancing to look 
from his bedroom window at a very early hour in the morning, he 
saw a woman go past carrying a baby in her arms; that he took a 
good look at her, wondering who she could be, since there was some- 
thing in her dress and appearance different from those of the women 
ot that neighborhood who were likely to be abroad at such an hour; 
that she was short in stature, pale and dark, and wore a black shawl; 
that, of course, he thought no more of the incident, traveled to his 
port, went his voyage, and never even heard of the baby deserted 
among the rocks; that many years after, while making purchases in 
the sliop of a nautical instrument maker in London, he had been par- 
ticularly struck by a woman who appeared to be acting^as a work- 
ing housekeeper in the establishment, because her face seemed 
familiar to him, though he was utterly unable to fix the memory; 
he had asked her whether she could help him at all — whether, on 
her side, she had the least idea of ever having seen him before that, 
that she had answered decidedly and sourly, “ Certainly not;” that 
he had remained unconvinced, and had even asked one of the shop- 
men what her name was, and was told she was a Miss Grace Allan, 
and belonged to London, and was, said the man, such a perfect 
porcupine of propriety, that she had probably construed the sea- 
man’s good-natured question into an insult; that he had thought no 
more of the matter; that it was only afterward, when returning 
through Ellon, that in quite a casual way the remembrance of the 
woman he had seen in the road there flashed on his mind, identify- 
ing her with the London housekeeper whose blank denial ot all 
recollection of him was therefore quite truthful, since on the fiist 
occasion of his seeing her she had not seen him; that beinsr near 
Buchanness when the advertisement appeared asking for informa- 
tion concerning the desertion of the child, he then, for the first time, 
heard the story, already forgotten by all but elderly neighbors; that, 
with the exception of the" black shawl, he could not speak as to 
what the woman was wearing whom he saw in Ellon, but that he 
could swear that the instrument-maker’s housekeeper wore for a 
brooch a flat silver circle, because he took special notice of it, think- 


100 


AT ANY COST. 


ing such would not be an unsuitable design for a gift he was at that 
time about to make; that he gave all this information for what it 
was worth, not seeking reward, which indeed he would not take; 
that it was nothing in itself, yet might lead to something; but that 
he was bound to say, in conclusion, that the London instrument 
maker was since dead, and that his establishment was utterly broken 
up and scattered. 

The only other document was a sheet of foolscap, on which was 
set forth a list of the places which Grace Allan had filled, between 
her leaving the instrument-maker’s and her coming to Peier Sandi- 
son’s. Considering the number of the years in this interval, this list 
was not short. For the increasing acerbity of Grace’s temper and 
the inconvenience of her deafness had made her an unwelcome and 
awkward inmate of the households which she had entered. She 
had been indeed a poor old woman, very low down in the world, 
and with a very gloomy outlook, when, all unexpectedly, the offer 
of the post of Mr. Sandison’s housekeeper had come to her. 

She had believed that she quite saw through her new master’s ac- 
ceptance and endurance of her infirmities. He had secrets of his 
own, which made him quite content to stand aside from the ordi- 
nary comforts and amenities of life, secrets perhaps which made it 
safer for him so to do. From the very first she had asked herself, 
sourly, “ "What could he have hidden in those locked-up rooms, 
which nobody ever entered — ay, which she had never entered yet — 
after all these years?”. 

Ah, and she had asked herself also, “ What had he got hidden be- 
tween the sealed-up leaves of the big Bible?” 

As the remembrance of that old wonder and suspicion turned 
round and stung her, the loose papers fluttered irom her hand to the 
floor, leaving in her grasp only that m which they had been folded, 
and which she had thought at first was but a blank wrapper. She 
saw now that there was writing upon it. There w r ere but a few 
words ; and how strangely they seemed to dance before her eyes ! 
Wbat was wrong with them, or with her? 

They were in Peter Sandison’s own handwriting, and they were 
nothing but a transcript of the texts — 

“ Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have 
compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may lorget, yet 
will I not forget thee.” 

‘‘ When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord taketh 
me up.” 

She gathered up the papers and put them back between the severed 
leaves. She had no longer any thought of hiding what she had 
done. What did that matter now? 

She sat there still and silent. The sweet spring dawn was bright- 
ening outside; a silver shaft of light stole even to that gloomy par- 
lor. . 

How well she remembered that red. red dawn over the eastern sea, 
when she had sped along the desolate roads, amid the treeless, hedge- 
less fields of dreary Buchan, with her baby at her breast! her one 
thought, how to put far from her the shame of it, and, above all, 
the burden of it; for there was none to share it with her. She re- 


AT ANY COST. 101 

membered all her thoughts that day, and all that had gone before, as 
one might remember a story that was told one of another. 

Had she ever loved him, that gay, passionate, light-living sailor 
lad, whom she had promised to marry? No; she could scarcely 
understand how it had all come about; he was the one man who 
had ever wooed her, and there had been no principle beneath her 
tart propriety. But when he sailed away and wrote her word that 
he would come back and “ make all right,” she did not doubt him; 
but even by that time she had said to herself passionately that she 
had been a fool. Was she to be doomed for a moment's wicked 
folly to a lifetime of drudgery as the insulted wife of a libertine and 
a drunkard? Nobody had known her where she was then. They 
took her for a strange sailor’s wife, waiting for her husband. They 
had only thought she showed little glory in her first-born and little 
eagerness for her husband’s return. 

Poor dissipated sailor! His promise to her did seem to have been 
honest, for he was making straight for the seaport where she waited 
when a storm rose, and his ship went down with all hands. 

She had little grief for him — so little that the strangers about her 
had never even dreamed that such evil tidings had reached her. She 
almost felt his death as a relief. The mere sensual passion of a cold 
nature like hers readily turns to hate and loathing. But her heart 
was filled with great bitterness, because she was left to bear her pen- 
alty alone. Was she with her high respectability which had been 
her aim, and hitherto her achievement, among her own people, to 
be dragged down to the lowest depths of ignominy by this nameless 
child? With such a charge, what could she save from the earnings 
of service? How could she lift up her head again and speak out 
her mind? 

She could clearly recollect up to that point, but not beyond it. 
She scarcely knew how her cruel scheme of desertion dawned upon 
her. She scarcely knew ’whether she meant the waves to swallow 
her child. No, no, surely not, or why did she not plunge him 
therein at once? No, no, she must have known that some good peo- 
ple were sure to find him. And when she had fled, and cast no look 
behind, and had sent back no inquiry, was it only from fear of de- 
tection? or was it not also from tear of hearing that evil had befallen 
her babe? Why, even Hagar had gone away from her darling Isli- 
inael, saying, “ Let me not see the death of the child.” 

Once or twice, in the long, long yeais since, she had vaguely ’won- 
dered whether that boy had lived or died. Once, when her way had 
been very hard-— just before Peter Sandison had crossed her path — 
she had half wondered whether it might not have been well for her 
to have struggled for his infancy, if, haply so, he might have de- 
fended her old age. But it was wonderf ul how seldom she had ever 
thought of him at all! The remembrance had never made her piti- 
ful to one forlorn child, nor merciful to one sinful woman. Why 
should she pity those, when she had not pitied her own ? W hy 
should she be merciful to the utter misery of these? Might not they, 
too, have “ kept themselves up,” as she had done, at any cost? But 
the remembrance had revenged itself upon her in a bitter mistrust of 
all her kind. A self-knowledge, tainted like hers, judged that 
every life had its secret, and that the secret of every life was of its 


102 


AT ANY O&ST. 

own sin. How could such as she realize that the sinful secret of one 
like her must ever lie a sinless secret on the hearts of many others, 
ana a secret cross over the whole lives of some? 

Old Grace Allan sat in the pale morning light, but it was not of 
these things that she thought, Nay, she thought of nothing. There 
was only once more a bitter protest against the penalty she had to 
bear. It seemed to her now, that the penalty from which she had 
shrunk in her young womanhood had been light indeed, though it 
still seemed to her “but natural” that she should have struck a 
deadly blow to escape it. And that it should turn up like this, after 
all — how hard, how hard, how hard it was! For to Grace’s narrow 
mind this was no simple fulfillment of the everlasting law that, some- 
where on some day, sin shall ever find out the sinner, it seemed to 
her a special Providence, and therefore specially cruel’ Was she, 
after all, to be condemned as a would-be murderess, and a life-long 
hypocrite? It was not fair!. Such measure was not meted out to 
everybody. She would not'bear it! She would escape somewhere, 
somehow! Futile as she had just proved such efforts to be, she was 
ready for them again. Experience is such a puzzling teacher! 
When we do well, and yet fail, she says distinctly, “ Try again." 
When w T e do badly, and fail, we are apt to catch that echo. 

Grace had laid her plans .well when she was young and vigorous 
in mind and body, and they had all come to nothing. Now she had 
no plans to lay, nothing to start upon except the blind rebellion 
within her. 

She would go away from here; she did not know where she meant 
to go. She did not know that she forgot to take anything with her, 
even a bonnet or shawl. She did not notice that she left the Bible 
lying open on the table, ready to tell its tale. She knew only her 
own wild determination not to meet the eyes of Peter Sandison. She 
would have shrunk from them less had her story been new to her son 
this day. But he had known it all the time; he had never looked at 
her unknowing of it! 

The candle had gone on burning in the wan dawning. It was at 
the socket now, and when it flickered and went out, that roused her 
to the consciousness that it was now broad daylight. What was to 
be done must be done quickly. 

She stole from the parlor and crept through the shop. Then, with 
chill and trembling hands, she unfastened the front door. How 
heavy the bolts and bars seemed! But they were all undone at last, 
and the morning air blew freshly on her withered face. She closed 
the door behind her very gently, lest any noise should penetrate 
through the house and rouse the sleepers in the far-off bedrooms. 
And then she went down the street, moving slowly, close by the 
houses, even drawing her hand along their shutters, as if she would 
have been glad of some support. If her mind had not been dead to 
all outside of herself, she would have noticed a woman standing half 
inside the old-tasliioned porch of a neighboring house — a woman 
who had spent the whole night walking to and fro and in and out 
of the quiet lanes in the vicinity, terribly fearless of the belated and 
half-tipsy wanderers who had greeted her with gibe and insult, and 
meekly obedient to the policeman’s gruff behest “to move on.” 
This was a young woman, dressed in thin garments of tawdry finery. 


AT ANY COST. 


103 


with a fluff of golden hair about her face, like a neglected aureole, 
and with blue eyes which looked like faded forget-me-nots. It was 
Kirsty Mail. 

When Kirsty saw Grace issue from the door of Mr. Sandison’s 
house she herself but drew back further into the shadow, not wish- 
ing to be seen by her who had met her so inhospitably on the pre- 
vious evening. But when she saw the old woman creep along, with 
her strangely groping hands, and marked her gray head bare to Ihe 
morning "breeze — for Grace wore not even her can — then Kirsty felt 
that something was wrong, and first she peeped from the porch, then 
she stole after the f ugiti ve. 

On and on went Grace, and on went Kirsty after her. It struck 
Kirsty very soon that the old woman was going she knew not 
whither. She walked like one blind, and every moment her step 
became more automatic. “ Is she out of her mind?” reflected the 
younger woman. “ Perhaps she is one of those who have fits of in- 
sanity, and it may have been a fit coming on, which made her so 
harsh to me last night. Poor old soul!-” 

Suddenly the old woman paused, made one more stumbling effort 
and sank to the ground. Kirsty was by her side in an instant. 

The world was waking up by this time. Two or three workmen 
were hastening to their daily labor, a shopman was taking down his 
shutters, and a policeman was lounging at a corner, waiting to be 
relieved from his duty. These all crowded about the two women. 
They looked rather suspiciously at poor Kirsty; but when she de- 
clared that she knew the old lady, that she was the housekeeper at 
Mr. Sandison’s in Penman’s Row— they were not so far from that 
quarter as to be ignorant of the name — and when Grace herself was 
discovered to be speechless, they found that they could not do better 
than accept Kirsty ’s guidance. 

So they carried Grace Allan back, staring, wide-eyed, and unresist- 
ing, Kirsty following, rendering kindly little attentions. Penman’s 
Row was still empty ana silent. The prolonged ringing of the door 
bell gave the first notice to Mr. Sandison and Toni that something 
unusual had happened. The men told where and how they had 
found the stricken woman. While they carried her upstairs to her 
own room, Mr. Sandison, going into the dining-room to search for 
some homely restorative, discovered the ravaged Bible. And Kirsty, 
cowering down beside Tom, sobbed out— 

“ 1 missed you last evening, and I didn’t think I’d dare to face 
her again; so I was watching about for a chance of seeing you this 
morning. It seems just like a Providence. Poor old lady! She 
makes me think of dear old grannie. I’m glad she was dead before 
she knew that 1 — Oh, Master Tom, I’ve been a wicked woman. 
D’ye mind that picture you gave me in Lerwick, because 1 fancied 
it was like grannie? Well, Pd always kept it, though with its face 
downward, in my box, because I couldn’t a-bearto see it. An’ only 
the other night, Cousin Hannah — her I’ve been with since 1 went 
wrong — got it, and took it out o’ the little frame, that she might put 
in something else, and she tore up the little picture o’ the good old 
wifie at the wheel! An’ ever since then it’s haunted me! As long 
as I could keep it at the bottom of the box, out o’ sight, it seemed 
different. But once it was tore up, it’s never been out o’ my sight. 


104 


AT A1STY COST. 


An’ it’s been more like grannie than ever. An’ I’d come to ask you, 
Master Tom, if you thought there was anybody who would let me 
do a little rough work to earn a bit of honest bread, an’ I’d promise 
to keep out o’ their sight.” 

“ In the meantime,” said Mr. Sandison, as if he had not heard a 
word that she had said, though he had entered the room and had 
stood behind her while she was speaking — “ in the meantime perhaps 
you will kindly give a helping hand in this house ot trouble and 
sickness. At present there is no woman here to wait upon— my 
mother!” 

Kirsty gave a low cry of eager obedience and sprung upstairs. 
Mr Sandison threw Tom a glance, which emphasized and illumi- 
nated his last words. Then lie, tuo, went slowly upstairs. But he 
did not got straight to the attic. Tom heard him unlocking the 
closed door, and then he heard him pacing with slow and heavy "steps 
about those long-deserted chambers. 

That morning’s post brought Tom an elaborate little box con- 
taining the wedding-cards and wedding-cake of Robert Sinclair, 
Esquire, and Miss Henrietta Rrander, and in that morning’s paper 
he saw the announcement of their marriage at a fashionable church. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

IN THE OPENED DOORS. 

Through the day, doctors came and went at Mr. Sandison’s sum- 
mons, but he himself was not visible, and poor Kirsty, coming down- 
stairs on divers errands, was Tom Ollison’s only source of informa- 
tion. She reported that “ Mrs. Allan had had a stroke,” and later 
on, ” that it was little likely she would ever be about again,” though, 
they said, “ there was no danger for the present.” 

In the twilight Mr. Sandison came into the parlor, where Tom was 
seated rather forlornly. He laid his hand on the young man’s shoul- 
der, w T ith a strong and yet a half caressing grasp. 

\‘ Come with me,” he said, “ we will have no more secrets in this 
house. We will let the fresh air blow through every place, as God 
means it shall, and as it always must, at last.” 

He led the way upstairs. He opened one of those mysterious 
doors — no longer locked— and went straight into the room. Seeing 
that Tom hesitated on the threshold, he turned and said, “ Come in, 
come in.” 

TV hat little daylight was still lingering outside found now free ac- 
cess to the apartment, for the white blinds, ashen with age, which 
had hitherto shut out any obtrusive gaze on the part of inquisitive 
opposite neighbors, were at last drawn up. The windows them- 
selves, too, had evidently been open for some time, but the gentle 
breezes of a calm spring" day had not yet sufficed wholly to dispel 
the ancient, stagnant atmosphere, and perhaps it was very well that 
the fading light was merciful to the dimness and dust of years of 
neglect. 

What did Tom see? 

Tom saw only what, to a heart which has power to understand 


AT ASTY COST. 


105 


it, is ever the most tragic sight of any — the signs of a hopeful, cheer- 
ful, ordinary life, which has been suddenly arrested by some great 
blow, some awful agony. He saw nothing but a pretty little apart- 
ment, prepared with care and taste, and full of those touches which 
betray a strong human interest. There was a stand tilled with 
flower-pots in the central window, wherein the dead plants stood 
like skeletons. There were pictures on the walls, beautiful steel en- 
gravings— there was one of these standing on a chair, with the hang- 
ing cord drawn through its rings, but not yet knotted. This was 
Landseer’s touching presentment of the faithful dog resting its head 
on its dead master’s coffin. Peter Sandison had put it out of his 
hands, all those years ago, that he might open a letter which was. 
brought to him— a letter whose mercenary falsehood and perfidy had 
closed those rooms from that day to this, turning the happy home 
that was to be into the charnel-house of dead hopes that could 
never be. 

“ Ay, 1 have been very foolish, ” broke out Peter Sandison. “ I 
need not tell you the tale. 1 dare say you have heard as much of it 
as needs be. I am not the first man-rand 1 fear 1 shall not be the 
last — who has lost his sight of God and his joy in God’s world be- 
cause — he had happened to fall in love with the wrong woman!” 

The sadness and pain of a lifetime were crystallizing, as in true 
hearts they always do crystallize, sooner or later, into humor. A 
good deal of heart-break goes to the making of epigram. The 
human mind throws out its sparks, as metals do, beneath hard 
blows! 

“But do me. justice, Tom,” he went on. “I never meant to 
make a dramatic sensation in closing up these rooms. In the first 
day of my disappointment I locked them up in sheer disheartenment 
and bitterness, and then 1 could not bear to face them again, and 
deferred doing so, and then there seemed no reason why 1 should, 
and then it seemed easiest lo let them lie as they w r ere, since the 
rest of the house amply sufficed my needs. 1 knew that even if 
they were never opened in my lifetime, they would tell little to those 
who would come after me. But what a waste it has been! Some- 
body ought to have made a home out of those rooms all these years. 
A house which is hindered from producing a home is as great a 
wrong to humanity as is a field which is kept from producing food.” 

There was silence. Mr. Sandison resumed. “About that poor 
soul upstairs, Tom, 1 need not say anything. She never knew that 
1 was her son till she evidently found it out this morning. I was p, 
desolate infant, Tom, as desolate as was poor Fred, the shopboy. 
And in mature life 1 sought out my mother, for I could not believe 
that she had really intended all that had come upon me. 1 found 
her poor and helpless, but fenced in by strong barriers from the 
shame and reproach of her old sin. O Tom, 1 could not bear that 
my words should fling it back upon her, that my hand should tear 
down the barriers of credit and respect behind which she had en-. 
trenched herself. 1 thought if 1 once had her in my house, that 
during years and years of close acquaintance, there would come a 
softer moment— the vaguest expression of some regretful yearning. 
Ah, Tom!” 

The infinite pain in the tone of those last words was his sole ex- 


106 


AT AKY COST. 


piession of the completeness of his disappointment. Tom said noth- 
ing. What was thereto be said? The young man’s mind went 
back to poor Grace’s early confidences, and to the mingled feelings 
they had aroused within himself. 

“ And so 1 loBt God,” said Mr. Sandison, in a quiet, even voice. 
As he spoke, Tom looked up at him, and their eyes met. Perhaps 
there was some question in those of the younger man. “ And so 1 
lost God,” Mr. Sandison repeated. “ I can not say I ever ceased to 
believe in Him, but 1 lost Him. Does a poor child cease to believe 
in his father, when he misses him in a crowded street, and takes the 
wrong turning, and goes wailing along among the strangers who 
give little notice to him or his trouble?” 

Tom could not help reflecting how it was those who had been 
“ infidel ” iii the deepest sense, unfaithful to all the claims of dutiful 
love and service, who had been the readiest, and the harshest, in 
calling this man “ atheist.” O poor Grace Allan! O unhappy Mrs. 
Brander. 

“ 1 had gone rather deeply into theology in my young days,” Mr. 
Sandison went on. “ My head had asked many questions, without 
answers to which my intellect would not rest satisfied. But I 
found that sort of satisfaction would not serve me here. Onexan 
not feed one’s heart on abstractions however logical or poetical. It 
was a Father and a Friend whom 1 wanted; a Father whose very 
face would satisfy me— a Friend who would walk with me and take 
counsel with me over every step of my way.” 

” These are the longings of all hearts,” said Tom gently. 

” There seemed no such Father, and no such Friend for me,” pur- 
sued Mr. Sandison. “ And the world 1 live in seemed as if it could 
not have been made and managed by such an one. Tom Ollison, 
what 1 am about to say I could say to few, but 1 think you may un- 
derstand me. 1 had lost God; 1 had lost all reflection of Him in the 
human faces round me — perhaps only because 1 had looked for Him 
most where I was least likely to find Him. And then it came into 
my mind that all 1 could do was to try to do my utmost to act as I 
should like to think God would act if He was living— a man in the 
world to-day.” 

” ‘ He who willeth to do God’s will, he shall know of Christ’s 
teaching,’ ” quoted Tom, in an undertone. 

“ Ay!” said Mr. Sandison, fervently. “ And it is wonderful how 
many lights come out in dark places, when one tries to follow that 
out. The great doubts and agonies of the human heart can not be 
met by anything but the great tacts and experiences of human life. 
You must have noticed that it is only quite lately that 1 have taken 
to reading the Gospels, and have left off going over the Proverbs of 
Solomon, and nothing but the Proverbs, every night, getting through 
the whole book once every month ? 1 dare say, alter what Grace said, 
you thought I chose that book as being the most practical, or as 
some people would call it,' the ‘ worldliest,’ in the Bible?” 

Tom smiled. 

“ In a way, I did so,” Mr. Sandison conceded. “ 1 knew that you 
had learned the Scriptures from your youth up, and that nothing in 
them could be new to you, as mere matter of fact or literature. And 
I knew, by what I had gone through myself, that you would presently 


AT AKY COST. 


107 

get interested in all^orts ot intellectual problems — about the evidence 
of: miracles, about the precise nature of inspiration, about the puzzle 
of unfulfilled prophecy, and such like difficulties— all difficulties 
which our minds must grapple with, according to the lights of our 
generation — but on which each new generation generally throws new 
lights, showing the lights of the generations preceding" to have been 
but darkness. 1 wanted j^our taitli to find instinctively a wider 
basis, so that fluctuating opinions on any subject might disturb it no 
more than the rooted tree is disturbed by the summer breeze which 
lightly stirs its branches. I wanted to bring home to you that 
Divine wisdom has a strong and sure hand in the conduct of this 
present life, for that is our best reason for trusting it to lead us 
through the mists and up the heights. The prophecies ot the 
Proverbs are not unfulfilled; for we see them worked out in weal 
or woe in our own lives, and in every life within our range!” 

“ I have felt as you do, sir,” said Tom, “ that the most satisfactory 
answers ot the intellect are no help to the doubts of the heart. But 
1 don’t think I could have got help while standing apart, as you seemed 
to stand, sir.” 

“ Ah!” cried Mr. ^andison, “there it is! There are some who 
seem only able to 'find God by going out into the wilderness; 
and we may notice that these hermits were generally men of peculiar 
history and of peculiar character. or do 1 suppose they themselves 
ever dreamed that their recluse habits had any of the special' sanctity 
which those who admired their final goodness were too ready*to at- 
tach to them. Those habits were simply a terrible end to those men 
— an heroic cure tor greater loss and evil ; and their stories show us 
that this cure worked by way of healing them enough to make them 
susceptible to some gentle touch which led them gradually back to 
as much human fellowship as it wars possible for them to bear.” 
He paused. “Tom,” he said, presently, “you don’t Know how 
much good you did me when you didn’t shun me because of the re- 
port you heard. And again, when l found that your faithfulness 
to your father's friend could outweigh the charms of the pleasant 
life at Stockley. And again, by sundry true words you spoke on 
sundry occasions. Tom, as 1 looked into your frank young face, 
1 caught again a reflection of the Divine Father and Friend.” Mr. 
Sandison said this in a slow, dry tone, as if the utterance were diffi- 
cult. Strong emotion scarcely dares to filter itself through speech, 
lest speech give way before it. 

Tom understood him far too well to breathe a single word. They 
sat in silence tor a long time— till the twilight faded into darkness, 
and there was nothing but the dull glimmer of a street lamp to 
dimly reveal the outline of their figures and of the furniture. 

Mr. Sandison was the first to break the spell. He rose up, saying 
cheerfully, “Well, the hoijLse is open now. Let God’s breeze blow 
through it, and God’s sunshine brighten it, and let us watch patient- 
ly to see what living seeds they will bear into it, and bring to blos- 
som within it.” 

He was speaking, half of the closed- up and desolate rooms, and 
half of his own closed-up and desolate heart, of which they had been 
but the result and the type. 


108 


AT ANY COST. 


That night, before Mr. Sandison went to rest, he stole up to the 
room where the aged woman lay, in her strange life-in-death. 

Grace's room had always been comtortabler Peter Sandison had 
seen to that from the first. But poor Kirsty’s zealous efforts had 
done much for it during her day’s attendance. A liberal fire was 
glowing on the hearth, for the spring nights were still chilly. Kirsty 
had got the shop- boy to bring her in some spring flowers— crocuses 
and daffodils, and these stood in a biown pot on a little table beside 
the bed. Prom the bed itself Kirsty had removed the drab coverlet, 
and had substituted a white counterpane, which she had found in 
the linen closet to which she had been given free access; and over 
the foot of the couch she had thrown, for added warmth, a coarse 
scarlet blanket. 

“If the poor thing can’t speak and can’t hear,” said Kirsty, 
speaking audibly as she went about the room, “ then there’s the 
more occasion she should see what’s pleasant. And there’s the 
master to consider too, and there’s been terrible trouble of some 
sort. The world’s full of trouble, and there’s always somebody’s 
wickedness at the bottom of it 1 think the master will let me stay 
and nurse the poor old lady. This house is just a heaven to me. 
Oh! what a fool 1 was to think nothing was so good as pleasure and 
finery; and what a price I’ve paid for my folly! 1 wonder if I’ll 
ever want to be bad again! I’m feared I should, if 1 was in sight 
o’ folks like the Branders, so 1 suppose that shows I’ve not really 
learned a bit of wisdom yet — except it may be that I’d have sense to 
keep out of the way of such like. How different it might have been 
if I’d gone to that watch-maker’s quiet house in Edinburgh. And 
what’s to become of poor Hannah? When the master said that if 
I’d sta} r and do the nursing he’d get somebody for the housework 1 
could not help thinking of her, but 1 daren’t mention her, for she 
can’t be trusted to keep from the drink for two hours together.” 

When Kirsty saw the master coming into the room, she rose from 
her low seat by the fire, and passed quietly out. 

Mr. Sandison carried in one hand the big Bible, which, he had 
brought up from the dining-room. In the other hand he had an 
inkstand, and behind his ear there was a pen. He laid the book on 
the table beside the invalid. He did not look at her as he did so. 
She gave a deep groan. 

He opened the volume, turning to the fly-leaves, between whose 
severed pages lay the lew old papers which that morning had 
wrought such a havoc in a lifetime’s hypocrisy. He took them up, 
one by one, still not looking toward the bed. He turned away and 
went toward the fire, taking the seat which Kirsty had vacated. He 
knew that Grace could see every movement. One by one, in no haste, 
but with gentlest deliberation, he put those papers on the blazing 
fire. It swiftly caught them up, and consumed them utterly. 

Then he lose, and - went back to the open Bible lying on the table. 
He took the pen, and wrote on the blank fly-leaf, in large, bold char- 
acters, “ From Peter Sandison to his mother.” 

Then he turned the book, and held it toward the invalid. She 
could easily read what was written there, and when she had done so 
she raised her pitiful eyes, and they met his. 

No word could pass between them now. But she fumbled with' 


AT A STY COST. 109 

her numb hands, and grasped his, and drew it upon her pillow, and 
kissed it — once, twice. 

Peter Sandison bent down and kissed her cheek. There was a 
moisture on it. 

That was all. He summoned Kirsty to resume her watch. And 
he went away, only waving back his hand bet oie he closed the door. 

“ Thank God!” he said to himself. “ And who knows but this 
*night have come to pass long ago, if 1 had been wiser? Thank 
God that He will reveal our sins to us, though He will also blot them 
ont! The truth, at any cost! Love can strike root in nothing else?” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

TWO ON THE CLIFFS. 

Late in the following summer, Tom Ollison paid another visit to 
Clegga He had been longing very much to do so, but the sugges- 
. tion finally came from Mr, Sandison. (Had he noticed how much 
more often these Kirkwall letters had arrived since Tom’s last visit 
to the North?) 

“ I wish you would bring your father back to spend the winter 
with us, Tom,” he said; ‘‘don’t you think you could persuade 
him? You know there are plenty of spare rooms now! 1 never 
thought how they were wasted, while they were shut up, but now it 
seems a terrible waste to think of them open and empty!” 

Mr. Sandison did not go very much into those deserted rooms. 
His life had grown intG his parlor and his shop. Still he went into 
them, determined to lay forever the ghost of the old shrinking. 
With his own hands he finished hanging the engraving, which he 
had laid down in his moment of despair nearly a quarter of a cent- 
ury before.. With his own hands he threw away the ashen plants 
which had withered in loneliness, and planted fresh ones whose 
sweet smell stole through the quiet rooms. He chose none but those 
with a sweet smell. Mrs. Black sent him roots from Stockley. He 
even broke his old habits so far as to accompany Tom on a Saturday 
visit to the Mill— perhaps induced to do so by the constant repeti- 
tions of Mrs. Black’s pathetic wish “ that Mr. Ollison’s great friend 
should for once see the old place as it always had been — since no- 
body knew what changes might be coming.” 

For the old Squire of Stockley was at last gathered to his fathers, 
and the distant heir, the Branders’ f riend, Captain Carson, reigned 
in his stead, and whenever Mrs. Black wrote to Tom, her letters 
were full of lamentation over the demoralizing innovations which 
had already begun. Kristy Mail was standing by the breakfast table 
arranging the aged invalid’s breakfast-tray, when Tom read one of 
those letters aloud to Mr. Sandison. What made.. Kii sty’s color 
come and go so fast? What made the knife and fork fall from her 
hand with a rattle? Ah, there is some name at the beginning of 
every story which ends with -a woman’s blighted life! There is 
some name at wdiich every wild woman we pass in the glaring 
promenade or in the yellow gaslight, would either turn aside and 
weep, or start up and curse! 


110 


AT ANY COST. 


And Rirsty Mail went apart and wept, wept for her own withered 
life, and wept,* too, for him who had misled and destroyed her. 
“ There was something nice and good in him, siie was sure,” she 
wailed to herself, with a pathetic faith very different from Mrsi 
Brander’s easy condonation of the sins of one who was “ so pleasant 
in society/’ Is not the hold which God keeps on every soul best 
typified by the clinging human love which reaches each from some- 
where and will not let them go? And if there was any such love for 
Captain Carson, it dwelt in the heart of the woman he had ruined. 
Yet Kirsty would have been ready to own that it was not this love 
which had led her downward, but lather her own vanity and idle 
ness; that she had not loved this man in those days, but had merely 
enjoyed his fair speeches and pretty gifts — that it was, only lately, 
since her otvn sin had found her out, and her own steps had turned 
back to the Father’s house, that her heart had yearned over the sm 
ner whose sin had not yet found him out, and who was still in the 
far country, a very citizen thereof, dealing out the swine’s husks to 
others, and not yet proving their unsatisfyingness for himself. 

And so Tom went off to the far North. But lie had first written 
to his father to ask whether he should not stop at Kirkwall and try 
to induce Mrs. Sinclair and Olive to accompany him to Shetland 
and be their guests at Clegga, and take another look at the old places 
and the old faces which once they had known so well. 

Did Tom know to what he was steering? In after days he never 
could be quite sure at what precise point a thought turned into a 
hope. 

He sent his invitation beforehand to Mrs. Sinclair and her daugh 
ter, and they had many debates over it in the wide old attics which 
had grown a dear home to them. They had prospered so far that 
they had ventured to take another room, ana Olive had grown used 
to her unremitting toil, and so accustomed to her constant cares and 
economies, that she could find interest and excitement in the fluctua- 
tions of her earnings. There had been no further encroachment on 
the little fund realized by her father’s life insurance, and Olive was 
even accumulating tiny savings of her own, made on the sound and 
sure plan of settling her maximum expenditure by her minimum 
earnings. Very tinysavings indeed they were, savings which would 
little avail against disaster if it fairly came, but which might go very 
far to avert disaster. They would not have supported her in a long 
illness, but wisely laid out, from time to time, they might do much 
to preserve health. Olive began to think, hopefully, that however 
long she might live, and however little she might be able to save, 
she" might continue so usef ul to the last that she might eat the bread 
of independence to the end. Only she must be quite sure to outlive 
her dear mother. Every night and morning she offered that one 
prayer. Every thing else she could cover with the great petition, 
“ Thy will begone;” but she could not quite give up this special 
plea. 

“ And this is only because God’s will is not clone!” she said to 
herself. “ For if it was, I could surely feel that I might safely 
leave dear mother to her only son, not only to* his support, but to 
the tenderness of his love and the warmth of his hearth.” 

When Tom Oilison’s invitation came, Olive went to her little store 


AT ANT COST. 


Ill 


and counted it over, and made many minute calculations She 
made up her mind that she and her mother could dare to aflord this 
treat. Under no circumstances could they gel so much pleasure at 
so low a price. This would cost nothing but their fares in the boat 
— they would need to make-no preparations to enjoy the bountiful 
hospitality of Clegga. Not that she could bear to go quite empty- 
handed among the 'poor old wives and fatherless children who had 
once been her parent’s pensioners; but if she sat up through only 
one night, her busy fingers would manufacture little gifts without 
cost of money or of working hours. Yes, they would go! 

Mrs. Sinclair heard her daughter’s determination a little wist- 
fully. She had hoped for an invitation to visit her son after his 
marriage and she had made up her mind that if one came, why even 
that sacred “ insurance money ” must, be taken that it might be ac- 
cepted. It would not be robbing Olive; no, no, once Robert saw 
his mother, he would be sure to make it up to her; it was not the 
money that he would grudge, it was only that he didn’t realize quite 
how Ihings were! 

She was right that it was not the money he grudged in this mat- 
ter. He would have paid the cost of the journey many times over, 
so long as she did not take it. (On the same principle or rather no- 
principle he would probably have liberally aided any impecunious re- 
latives who had known how to thrust their poverty on him at incon- 
venient times.) Poor little lady, with her worn black dress, and the 
patient pain in her beautiful eyes* what a discord her appearance 
w r ould have struck in his gairish, rapid li;e! “ Mother is happiest 
where she is,” he said to himself. And there was not only heart 
lessness in the reflection, it ended in a sigh. He felt there was 
something about lnm and his wife and his home which would trouble 
Mrs. Sinclair. “ Mother would not understand,” he said, and 
sighed again. 

So once more the two women went down to the dock and met 
Tom, and this time they went on board with him. The young, 
strong man and the high-spirited maiden were very tender and watch- 
ful over the little mother. They said aside that this going back 
would try her a little, and they wondered, in their inexperience, to 
notice that while her tears would start fast and faster, her smiles 
also grew brighter, and she became quite eager in her recognition of 
points and places which stirred old memories. 

They bad a happy time in dear old Clegga. And in the long 
quiet w r alks which Tom and Olive took together along the roads 
which waved up and down the low, green hills looking down on the 
wide blue sea, they opened their hearts aud spoke to each other, as 
hitherto each had only silently thought. And if, as that pleasant 
sojourn drew to a close, there came long silences in those walks, it 
was not because they had nothiug more to say, but because there 
was so much to say, which they felt they could trust to each other’s 
thoughts, almost better than to any words. 

Olive Sinclair owned to herself this much— that whether Tom 
Ollison had loved her or not, she might easily have loved him, only 
that she knew such feelings were not for her. She would never 
leave her mother. Well, she had her mother to love and to work 
for, and what would life be without that? 


112 


AT AHY COST. 


And Tom Ollison asked himself whether it did not seem very hard 
that Peter bandison should be left in loneliness at last— a loneliness 
haunted by memories of deprivation and wrong. A very different 
loneliness from that of his own father, with his wholesome memo- 
ries, his large local influence, and the cheerful coming to and fro of 
his prosperous married children. Tom did not feel as if the seed 
of one’s own happiness must be planted in the pain of others, and 
watered by their tears. 

But Tom had the masculine right of action and enterprise. Where 
Olive must have silently taken up what she felt to be her duty, he 
could seek to elicit her opinion on such matters, and could lead her 
on from generalities to their own particular cases. 

And so it came to pass that the first breathings of the great love of 
life between those two, were mingled with tender thoughts of others, 
and careful consideration concerning them. It came to them as the 
corner-stone placed solemnly on the edifice of affection and duty — 
not as the missile of a battering-ram rudely hurled against it. They 
could measure what it must be by knowing how much these were, 
and by finding this supreme above them! 

And Mrs. Sinclair, with the keen vision of one who had been 
through these experiences, foresaw what was coming, and so sitting 
alone on the bench outside Clegga, overlooking the sunny bay, she 
strove to brace her heart for this sacrifice, and to win strength to say 
that if it was to be well with her child, then it should be well with 
her- Yet at the thought of the vanishing of the days of quiet love 
and labor in which her wrung heart had found all the rest it could 
ever find in this world, she could scarcely repress the last cry of 
patient anguish, “ How long, O Lord, how long!” 

And while Mrs. Sinclair sat thus, Tom and Olive strolled slowly 
down the road where she and Robert had traveled on the wild De- 
cember morning when our story commenced, but which Tvas now 
rich with wild flowers, bright in the summer sunshine. And Tom 
said to Olive that he would never have dared to ask her to love him, 
if he had meant such love to disturb the sacred duties already in her 
life — that he thought the love of life should mean two gladly bear- 
ing together the double duty that had been divided between them. 
And then they said 10 each other that they could not at once very 
clearly see how their future was to work itself out, but that surely 
their love would be strong enough to grapple with all details, and 
not a sickly sentiment on which no cross wind must blow, lest it 
slay it altogether. And they said, too, that their duty was owed to 
good people, who were not likely now to prove themselves inconsid- 
erate and selfish tor the first time in their lives; though of course 
they must expect to find them human with all the little human 
moods and weaknesses, which, after all, seem but a cement to bind 
together human virtues. And Tom said to Olive that he thought 
those must have a very poor idea of all that is involved in twain being 
made one, who feel that such unity is endangered if not nursed in 
solitude; and that he thought there is little fear of any household, 
however constituted, not falling in the main into right relations 
around any married pair who love, honor, and respect each other. 
And then Olive said softly, that Isaiah had made it one of the signs 
of national prosperity that “ old men and old women should dwell 


AT ANT COST. 


113 


in the streets of Jerusalem, imd every man with his staft in his hand 
tor every age. ” Then they had come nearer to particulars, and Tom 
said that lie feared Mrs. Sinclair might shrink from life in London, 
and Olive answered that she was sure her mother would be happy 
anywhere with those she loved. And then they said how, in Lon- 
don, she would not be far from Stockley, and might, perhaps, have 
a double home if she wished. And then they fell to still homelier 
discussions of ways and means, which even a listening angel might 
have almost envied, because of the divine alchemy with which tlieir 
human hands could transmute filthy lucre into pure Jove. 

That night Tom Ollison told Mrs. Sinclair that he would never 
take her daughter from her, but that Olive had well-nigh promised 
in her mother's name that he should be accepted by her as a son. 
And Mrs. Sinclair put her hands on his shoulders and drew down 
his face and kissed him with the fond motherly kiss which he had 
not known for years. And she longed to ask him and Olive to for- 
give her for the doubt and pain she had felt that afternoon, but she 
kept silence because she thought it would hurt them even to hear of 
it. And then she went away and wept a little, because she had never 
seen her Robert’s wife, and because she could not help believing 
that her own son would feign be as kind and good as Tom, but had 
somehow failed to seem so! 


EPILOGUE. 

After all, Tom Ollison and Olive Sinclair were married sooner 
than they had dared to hope on that summer day w r hen they had 
stood hand-in-hand among the wild flowers on the road over the 
cliffs. Life’s path broadened before their feet, as it ever does be- 
fore the true heait and the resolute will. 

And now they lived in the old house in Penman’s Row, and Olive 
has brightened the shady rooms with the pretty tastes and fancies 
which love and happiness have developed in her, as 1 he warmth of 
spring brings out the crocuses and snowdrops. As Tom sits at the 
head of the table in the dining-room (for Mr. Sandison has said that 
he is only too delighted to abdicate the post- of carver and sit aside 
at leisure to criticise his successor), Tom wonders if it can be the 
same dreary room into which he was ushered on his first arrival in 
London, for everything seems different except the quaint mirrors 
and the comfortable cat, who has exchanged the old coat on which 
he then lay for a soft red cushion. The upper rooms are Olive’s 
more especial domain; but more and more often, as she sits in the 
twilight playing on the piano and crooning old songs, Peter Sandi- 
san steals upstairs and sits listening in the shadows. Mrs. Sinclair 
found the gloom and excitement of London life rather too much for 
her at first, and made long visits to her old friends the Blacks at 
Stockley ; but as time passed on she seemed able to store up the cheer- 
fulness and calm she gathered there, and to bring them back with 
her, along with the big nosegays and stuffed hampers which Mrs. 
Black never failed to ^end. By her own choice her special apart- 
ment was the wide, low attic which had formerly been Tom’s room; 
and her son-in-law gave her an exquisile surprise by bringing her 
familiar household gods from the far North to furnish it. Better 


114 


AT ANY COST. 


“ goods ” could have been bought near at hand for less than the cost 
ot the transit of the old chests and clumsy chairs, but he wanted to 
give her “ a gift,” and she seemed already to live so wholly in the 
spirit, that one need give her naught but what also had its value 
wholly in the spirit, consecrated by tender emotion, by memory, and 
by hope. 

It was hard to find the point of view from which Robert and 
Etta Brander regarded the new arrangements in Penman’s Row. 
They came there once or twice: but the West End of London is 
very far away Horn its other quarters, and a lady who, like Etta, 
never travels except in her own brougham, and is very fearful ot its 
panels being scratched, cannot venture often into the city. Besides, 
Etta’s constitution is steadily growing less adapted to London, except 
during the few weeks ot “ the season.” She is always trying the 
climate of some new watering-place, or the effects of some fashion- 
able ” cure ” for those vague maladies which occupy those who have 
nothing else to do. Robert has ins fine house very much to him- 
self, and though it is not very far from Ormolu Square, he does not 
see much of his wife’s parents, he and Mr. Brander having separated 
their business interests. The younger man considered that the elder 
was getting “ slow” and subsiding into grooves, where he himself 
would never have made the fortune he had made, and with which, 
therefore, Robert was not going to be content. The wheel of life 
goes fast with Robert Sinclair, and his face has a wan, hunted look, 
not like those who live by hardest daily labor, but more like that of 
the needy adventurers who hang on the very outskirts of honesty. 
He is rich and likely to be richer, though none know so well as him- 
self what sharp corners he still turns sometimes, and how nenr ruin 
may be after all. Sometimes he asks querulously, “ If life is worth 
the living?” But it has never yet dawned on him that perhaps he 
has made a bad bargain, and that love, and friendship, and duty, 
high thoughts, and pleasant household ways and holy aspiiations, 
are what do make life worth living, and that these are in the forfeit 
when we will “ get on ” — “ at any cost.” 

Tom and Olive know well that the son whom she sees so seldom 
is in the mother’s heart when she goes away and sits for hours in 
the quiet attic, where no sound penetrates save Ivirsty Mail’s gentle 
footfall as she goes to and fro in the chamber where Grace Allen 
still lies, cut off from speech and hearing, but with a pleading look 
softening her hard eyes, and a habit of kindly clasping bending her 
stiff fingers. Tom and Olive are so happy together that they do not 
resent the shadows of sin and sorrow ..amid which they carry sun- 
shine, and their home is not less sacred to them because they often 
say to each other that it seems to be a miniature copy of tfie work- 
ings of God’s providence in its widest ranges, and that while they 
twain represent its active life and its material progress, its very 
existence is rooted in the martyred life ot Him who, taking nothing 
for His own, bore all and forgave all; and in the loving heart of her 
who is still waiting for the return of that prodigal son of modern 
life, who has mistaken gold for food, success for satisfaction, ana 
worldly power for the peace which passeth understanding. 


THE END. 


t 


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18 A Princess of Thule. 

88 A Daughter of Beth* 

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51 Kilmeny., 

58 The Monarch of Mincing Lane r » ... e. ........ 

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tie White Wings; A Yachting Sbm&aoe 

§86 Oliver Goldsmith. .. 

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1088 That Beautiful Wretch 

1161 The Four MacNicols. 

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mt TEE SEASIDE I IB BAB Y. — Ordinary Edition, 


MRS. FORRESTER’S WORKS.— Continued, 

538 A Young Man’s Fancy . . 1© 

556 Mignon. 20 

573 The Turn of Fortune’s Wheel 10 

600 Doiores 20 

620 In a Country Ho?ise 10 

682 Queen Elizabeth’s Garden. . . 10 . 

858 Roy and, Viola 20 

894 My Hero 20 

1163 My Lord and My Lady 20 

1471 I Have Lived and Loved 20 

1588 From Olympus to Hades. 20 


EMILE GABORIAU’S WORKS. 

408 File dSTo. 118 20 

465 Monsieur Lecoq. First half 20 

465 Monsieur Lecoq. Second half 20 

476 The Slaves of Paris. First half 20 

476 The Slaves of Paris. Second half 20 

490 Marriage at a Venture 10 

494 The Mystery of Orcival 20 

501 Other People’s Money 20 

509 Within an Inch of His Life 20 

515 The Widow Lerouge 20 

523 The Clique of Gold 20 

671 The Count’s Secret. Part 1 20 

671 The Count’s Secret. Part II 20 

704 Captain Contanceau; or, The Volunteers of 1782 10 

741 The Downward Path ; or, A House Built on Sand ( La 

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741 The Downward Path; or, A House Built on Sand (La 

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758 The Little Old Man of the Batignolles 10 

778 The Men of the Bureau 10 

789 Promises of Marriage 10 

818 The 13th Hussars 10 

834 A Thousand Francs Reward 10 

899 Max’s Marriage; or, The Vicomte’s Choice 10 

1184 The Marquise de Brinvilliers 20 

MARY CECIL HAY’S WORKS. 

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407 The Arundel Motto (in large type) 20 

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427 Old Myddelton’s Money (in large type) 20 

17 Bidden Perils 10 

434 Hidden Perils (in large type). 20 

23 The Squire’s Legacy 10 

516 The Sguire’s Legacy &n large type). . . . 20 


TEE SEASIDE LIBRAE T. — Ordinary Edition. M 

&K3xemxa *L . — — . i . r i r rr -g 

MARY CECIL HAY’S WORES.-Continued, 

S7 Victor and Vanquished . . . . 26 

29 Nora’s Love Test, 10 

421 Nora’s Love Test (in large type).. . , 2® 

275 A Shadow on the Threshold. ........ 10 

868 Reaping the Whirlwind 10 

884 Back to the Old Home 10 

415 A Dark Inheritance 10 

440 The Sorrow of a Secret, and Lady Carmichael’s Will . 10 

886 Brenda Yorke. 10 

724 For Her Dear Sake. 20 

852 Missing. .. . . 10 

855 Dolf ’s Big Brother 10 

930 In the Holidays, and The Name Cut on 2 Gate 10 

935 Under Life’s Key, and Other Stories < 20 

972 Into the Shade, and Other Stories. . . 2® 

1011 My First Offer . 10 

1014 Told in New England, and Other Tales 10 

1016 At the Seaside; or, A Sister’s Sacrifice 10 

1220 Dorothy’s Venture . 20 

1221 Among the Ruins, and Other Stories. . 10 

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1549 Bid Me Discourse * . . . 10 


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598 The Manliness of Christ. . • . . . » 10 

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132 Jack Hinton, the Guardsman 20 

187 A Rent in a Cloud 10 

146 Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon (Triple Number). .... 30 
152 Arthur O’Leary 20 

168 Con Cregan , 20 

169 St. Patrick’s Eve 10 

174 Kate O’Donoghue 20 

257 That Boy of Norcott’s 10 

296 Tom Burke of Ours. First half 20 

296 Tom Burke of Ours. Second half 2$ 

319 Davenport Dunn. First half 20 

319 Davenport Dunn. Second half 20 

404 Gerald Fitzgerald 20 

470 The Fortunes of Glencore 2© 

§>29 Lord Kilgobbin... ............ .. 20 

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CHARLES LEYER’S WORKS.-Continued. 

@09 Barrington. .... .. ^ 

383 Sir Jasper Carew, Knight . 2® 

857 The Martins of Cro’ Martin. Part I SO 

357 The Martins of Cro’ Martin. Part II. 20 

822 Tony Butler. . . . « . 20 

872 Luttrell of Arran. Part I » 20 

872 Luttrell of Arran. Part II . . 20 

951 Paul Gosslett’s Confessions . 10 

965 One of Them.' First half . 20 

965 One of Them. Second half 20 

989 Sir Brook Fossbrooke. Parti 20 

989 Sir Brook Fossbrooke. Part II. 20 

1235 The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly. 20 

1309 The Dodd Family Abroad. First half. 20 

1309 The Dodd Family Abroad. Second half 20 

1342 Horace Templeton * 20 

1394 Roland Cashel. First half 20 

1394 Roland Cashel. Second half 20 

1496 The Daltcns; or. Three Roads in Life. First half 20 

1496 The Daltons; or, Three Roads in Life. Second half 20 


SAMUEL LOYER’S WORKS. 

33 Handy Andy 2b • 

66 Rory O’More 20 

123 Irish Legends 10 

158 He Would be a Gentleman, 20 

293 Tom Crosbie 10 


SIR BULWER LYTTON’S WORKS. 

6 The Last Days of Pompeii 20 

587 Zanoni,.,.. 20 

689 Pilgrims of the Rhine, 10 

714 Leila; or, The Siege of Grenada, 10 

781 Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes, 29 

955 Eugene Aram, 20 

979 Ernest Maltravers 29 

1001 Alice; or. The Mysteries 29 

1064 The Caxtons 20 

1089 My Novel. First half 20 

1089 My Novel Second half «... 20 

1205 Kenelm Chillingly; His Adventures and Opinions. ....... 20 

1316 Pelham; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman 26 

1454 The Last of the Barons. First half M 

1454 The Last of the Barons. Second half, 20 

1529 A Strange Story , 20 

1690 What Will He Do With It? First half 20 

1090 What Will He Do With It? SecoadhaJL ........ .„ , * % 


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T. B. MACAULAY’S WORKS. 

926 The Lays of Ancient Rome, and Other Poems .10 

976 History of England. Part I 20 

976 History of England. Part II 20 

976 History of England. Part 111 20 

976 History of England. Part IY 20 

976 History of England. Part Y 20 

976 History of England. Part YI 20 

976 History of England. Part YII 20 

976 History of England. Part YIII - 20 

976 History of England. Part IX 20 

976 History of England. Part X 20 

GEORGE MACDONALD’S WORKS. 

455 Paul Faber, Surgeon 20 

491 SirGibbie 20 

595 The Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood 20 

606 The Seaboard Parish .' 20 

627 Thomas Wingfold Curate 20 

643 The Yicar’s Daughter : 20 

668 David Elginbrod 20 

677 St. George and St. Michael * 20 

790 Alec Forbes of Howglen 20 

887 Malcolm 20 

922 Mary Marston 20 

938 Guild Court. A London Story 20 

948 The Marquis of Lossie 20 

962 Robert Falconer . 20 

1375 Castle Warlock: A Homely Romance 20 

1439 Adela Cathcart 20 

1466 The Gifts of the Child Christ, and Other Tales 10 

1488 The Princess and Curdie. A Girl’s Story 10 

1498 Weighed and Wanting 20 

E. MARLITT’S WORKS. 

453 The Princess of the Moor 20 

522 The Countess Gisela 20 

636 In the Schillingscourt * 20 

866 The Second Wife 20 

878 In the Counselor’s House 20 

(1055 The Bailiff’s Maid * 20 

1210 Old Mamselle’s Secret - 20 

CAPTAIN MARRYAT’S WORKS. 

108 The Sea-King.. 10 

122 The Privateersman. 10 

141 Masterman Ready 10 

147 Rattlin, the Reefer . 10 

150 Mr. Midshipman Easy. . 10 

156 Phe King s Q wjpu m if $ ? < i h $ t m »» m > * m» • m»« »« 


m 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Ordinary Edition. 


CAPTAIN MARRYAT’S WORKS, -Continued. 

159 The Phantom Ship * II 

163 Frank Mildmay. . 16 

170 Newton Forster. 16 

173 Japhet in Search of a Father. . . . 26 

175 The Facha of Many Tales 10 

176 Percival Keene . . . . e . 10 

185 The Little Savage . 10 

192 The Three Cutters, 10 

199 Settlers in Canada. . 10 

207 The Children of the New Forest 10 

266 Jacob Faithful 10 

273 Snarleyyow, the Dog Fiend 10 

282 Poor Jack. 10 

340 Peter Simple. 26 

898 The Mission; or, Scenes in Africa 26 

1070 The Poacher 20 

1116 Valerie, 20 

FLORENCE MARRYAT’S WORKS, 

110 The Girls of Feversham. 16 

119 Petronel 26 

197 “ No Intentions ”...... . 26 

206 The Poison of Asps. 10 

219 “ My Own Child”.... 16 

305 Her Lord and Master 16 

323 A Lucky Disappointment, 10 

426 Written in Fire 26 

533 Ange 26 

635 A Harvest of Wild Oats 20 

703 The Root of All Evil 20 

742 A Star and a Heart IQ 

784 Out of His Reckoning, . 10 

820 The Fair-Haired Alda 20 

897 Love’s Conflict ... . 20 

1038 With Cupid’s Eyes 20 

1067 A Little Stepson 10 

1086 My Sister the Actress 20 

1349 Phyllida. A Life Drama 20 

1654 Facing the Footlights. ....... 20 

j MISS MULOCKS WORKS, 

l 2 John Halifax, Gentleman 10 

456 John Halifax, Gentleman (large type) 20 

77 Mistress and Maid 10 

81 Christian’s Mistake 10 

82 My Mother and I 10 

88 The Two Marriages. 10 

91 The Woman’s Kingdom 2(3 

101 A Noble Life 16 

£®3 A Brave Lady. ...... . .. . , . „ M 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Ordinary Edition . 


xra( 


MISS MULOCK’S WORKS.— Continued. 


121 A Life for a Life 

180 Sermons Out of Church 10 

135 Agatha’s Husband 20 

142 The Head of the Family ...... 2® 

227. Hannah . 10 

240 The Laurel Bush. 10 

291 Olive 20 

294 The Ogil vies 20 

314 Nothing New 10 

320 A Hero 10 

330 A Low Marriage 10 

457 The Last of the Ruthvens, and The Self-Seer 10 

480 Avillion ; or, The Happy Isles 10 

626 Young Mrs. Jardine. 10 

628 Motherless (Translated by Miss Mulock) 10 

752 The Italian’s Daughter 10 

773 The Two Homes 10 

804 A Bride’s Tragedy 10 

824 A Legacy 20 

850 The Half-Caste 10 

886 Miss Letty’s Experiences 10 

945 Studies from Life 10 

964 His Little Mother, and Other Tales 10 

978 A Woman’s Thoughts About Women 10 

1029 Twenty Years Ago. A Book for Girls. (Edited by Miss 

Mulock) 10 

1177 An Only Sister, Madame Guizot de Witt. (Edited by Miss 

Mulock) 10 

1261 Plain-Speaking s 10 


MRS. OLIPHANTS WORKS. 


136 Katie Stewart - 10 

210 Young Musgrave - 20 

391 The Primrose Path 20 

452 An Odd Couple 10 

475 Heart and Cross 10 

488 A Beleaguered City 10 

497 For Love and Life * 20 

511 Squire Arden 20 

542 The Story of Valentine and His Brother 20 

596 Caleb Field 10 

651 Madonna Mary . 26 

665 The Fugitives 10 

680 The Greatest Heiress in England 2€ 

706 Earthbound 10 

775 The Queen (Illustrated) 10 

785 Orphans. \ 10 

$02 Phcebe, Junior. A Last Chronicle of Carlingford . W 

175 No. 8 Grow Road. U 


xzv TEE SEASIDE LIBRAE I — Ordinary EdUUn, 


MRS. OLIPHANT'S WORKS —Continued. 

881 He That Will Not When He May . . 2® 

919 May 2$ 

959 Miss Marjoribanks. Part I 20 

959 Miss Marjoribanks. Part II 20 

1004 Harry Joscelyn 20 

1017 Carita 20 

1049 In Trust 20 

1215 Brownlows 20 

1319 Lady Jane . 10 

1396 Whiteladies 20 

1407 A Rose in June 10 

1449 A Little Pilgrim , 10 

1547 It Was a Lover and His Lass. 20 

1662 Salem Chapel 20 

1669 The Minister’s Wife. First half. 20 

1669 The Minister’s Wife. Second half 20 


“OUIDA’S” W ORKS. 

49 Granville de Yigne; or, Held in Bondage 20 

54 Under Two Flags . .. ... 20 

55 In a Winter City 10 

56 Strathmore - 20 

59 Chandos . .... 20 

61 Bebee: or, Two Little Wooden Shoes. 10 

62 Folle-Farine 20 

71 Ariadne — The Story of a Dream 20 

181 Beatrice Boville 10 

211 Randolph Gordon 10 

230 Little Grand and the Marchioness 10 

241 Tricotrin 20 

249 Cecil Castlemaine’s Gage 10 

279 A Leaf in the Storm, and Other Tales 10 

281 Lady Marabout’s Troubles 10 

334 Puck ... . 20 

377 Friendship 20 

379 Pascarel 20 

386 Signa 20 

389 Idalia 20 

563 A Hero’s Reward 10 

676 Umilta 10 

699 Moths 20 

791 Pipistrello 10 

864 Findelkind 10 

915 A Village Commune 20 

1025 The Little Earl 10 

1247 In Maremma. 20 

1334 Bimbi 10 

1586 Frescoes 10 

1625 Wanda, Countess von Szalras W 


TEE SEASIDE LIBBABT. — Ordinary Edition. 


r* 


JAMES PAYN’S WORKS, 

1S8 What He Cost Her . 1© 

299 By Proxy 2® 

345 Halves . . 10 

358 Less Black Than We’re Painted 20 

889 Found Dead . . , 10 

382 Gwendoline’s Harvest , 20 

401 A Beggar on Horseback «, . . , 10 

406 One of the Family 20 

485 At Her Mercy . * 2G 

502 Under One Roof (Illustrated) 20 

602 Lost Sir Massingberd . 10 

646 Married Beneath Him. 20 

687 Fallen Fortunes 26 

892 A Confidential Agent „ 26 

981 From Exile 20 

1045 The Clyffards of Civile 20 

1149 A Grape from a Thorn. . 20 

1193 High Spirits. . 10 

1267 For Cash Only ...» 20 

1516 Kit: A Memory 20 

1524 Carlyon’s Year 10 

1652 A Woman’s Vengeance : 20 

CHARLES READE’S WORKS. 

4 A Woman-Hater 20 

19 A Terrible Temptation 10 

21 Foul Play 20 

24 “It is Never Too Late to Mend ” 20 

31 Love Me Little, Love Me Long 20 

34 A Simpleton 10 

41 White Lies. 20 

78 Griffith Gaunt . 20 

86 Put Yourself in His Place . 20 

112 Very Hard Cash 20 

203 The Cloister and the Hearth 20 

237 The Wandering Heir. . 10 

246 Peg Woffington 10 

270 The' Jilt.... 10 

371 Christie Johnstone. ... 10 

536 Jack of all Trades 1G 

1204 Clouds and Sunshine 10 

1322 The Knightsbridge Mystery. 10 

1390 Singleheart and Doubleface. A Matter-of-Fact Romance. . 10 

W. CLARK RUSSELL’S WORKS. 

848 A Sailor’s Sweetheart 20 

1034 An Ocean Free Lance 20 

1339 The Wreck of the “ Grosvenor ” 20 

1373 My Watch Below; or, Yarns Spun When Off Duty, 20 

1381 Auld Lang Syne . . 10 

1467 The “ Lady Maud Schooner Yacht 20 

A Sets* Queen. 


CVT THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. — Ordinary Edition. 


SIE WALTER SCOTT’S WORKS. 

39 Ivanhoe 20 

183 Kenilworth , 20 

196 Heart of Mid- Lothian . . 20 

593 The Talisman 20 

723 Guy Mannering 20 

857 Waverley 20 

920 Rob Roy 20 

1007 Quentin Durward 20 

1082 Count Robert of Paris 20 

1275 Old Mortality 20 

1328 The Antiquary 20 

1399 The 20 

1462 The Betrothed : A Tale of the Crusaders, and The Chroni- 
cles of the Canongate 20 

1598 Redgauntlet. A Tale of the Eighteenth Century 20 

1701 The Monastery 20 

1702 The Abbot (Sequel to “ The Monastery ”) 20 

EUGENE SUE'S WORKS. 

129 The Wandering Jew. First half 20 

129 The Wandering Jew. Second half 20 

205 The Mysteries of Paris. First half 20 

205 The Mysteries of Paris. Second half 20 

800 De Rohan; or, The Court Conspirator 20 

835 Arthur 20 

1030 The Commander of Malta 20 

1540 Martin the Foundling; or. The Adventures of a Valet de 

Chambre. Vol. 1 20 

1540 Martin the Foundling; or, The Adventures of a* Valet de 

Chambre. Vol. II 20 

1540 Martin the Foundling; or, The Adventures of a Valet de 

Chambre. Vol. Ill 20 

1590 Pride ; or, The Duchess. First half 20 

1590 Pride; or, The Duchess. Second iialf 20 

WE M. THACKERAY’S WORKS. 

559 Vanity Fair 20 

570 Lovel, the Widower 10 

580 Denis Duval „ 10 

582 Henry Esmond 20 

613 The Newcomes. Parti 20 

613 The Newcomes. Part II 20 

624 The Great Hoggarty Diamond 10 

638 Pendennis. Parti ... 20 

638 Pendennis. Part II 20 

648 The Virginians. Part I 20 

648 The Virginians. Part II ». 20 

669 Adventures of Philip. Parti 20 

669 Adventures of Philip. Part II 20 

961 Barry Lyndon 10 

1597 Catherine: A Story. By Ikey Solomons, Esq., Junior,* If 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. — Ordinary Edition. 




ANTHONY TROLLOPE’S WORKS. 


12 The American Senator 20 

899 The Lady of Launay 10 

530 Sir Harry Hotspur of Hu mbleth waite 20 

631 John Caldigate 10 

601 Cousin Henry . 10 

768 The Duke’s Children . 20 

870 An Eye for an Eye 10 

910 Dr. Wortle’s School * 10 

944 Miss Mackenzie 20 

1047 Ayala’s Angel 20 

1090 Barchester Towers. . . .- 20 

1201 Phineas Finn. First half 20 

1201 Phineas Finn. Second half. . 20 

1206 Doctor Thorne. First half 20 

1206 Doctor Thorne. Second half 20 

1217 Lady Anna 20 

1255 The Fixed Period 10 

3283 Why Frau Frphmann Raised Her Prices, and Other Stories 10 

3292 Marion Fay 20 

3306 The Struggles of Brown, Jones & Robinson. 20 

1318 Orley Farm. First half . r 20 

1318 Orley Farm. Second half 20 

1348 The Belton Estate 20 

1419 Kept in the Dark 10 

1436 The Kellys and Tire O Kellys 20 

1450 The Two Heroines of Plumplington . 10 

1455 The Macdermots of Bally cloran . 20 

1473 Castle Richmond 20 

1486 Phineas Redux. First half. 20 

1486 Phineas Redux. Second half 20 

1494 The Vicar of Bullhampton 20 

1511 Not If I Know It 10 

1551 Is He Popenjoy? . 20 

1559 The Small House at Allington. First half 20 

1559 The Small House at Allington. Second half. 20 

1567 The Last Chronicle of Barset. First half 20 

1567 The Last Chronicle of Barset. Second half 20 

1634 The Way We Live Now. First half 20 

1634 The Way We Live Now. Second half 20 

1656 Mr. Scarborough’s Family . . , 10 

JULES VERNE’S WORKS. 

5 The Black-Indies A ”0 

16 The English at the North Pole lO 

48 Hector Servadac 10 

57 The Castaways; or, A Voyage Round the World — South 

America 10 


60 The Castaways; or, A Voyage Round the World — Australia 10 
64 The Castaways; or, A Voyage Round the World — New 

Zealand. 10 


^ /m TEE SEASIDE L1BEAR Y. — - Ordinary Edition . 


JULES VERNE’S WORKS.-Continued. 

38 Five Weeks in a Balloon 1G 

72 Meridiana, and The Blockade Runners 10 

75 The Fur Country. Part I 10 

75 Tiie Fur Country. Part II 1ft 

84 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas . 1C 

87 A Journey to the Centre of the Earth . . . 1ft 

90 The Mysterious Island — Dropped from the Clouds 16 

93 The Mysterious Island — The Abandoned 10 

97 The Mysterious Island — The Secret of the Island 10 

99 From the Earth to the Moon 10 

111 A Tour of the World in Eighty Days 10 

131 Michael Strogoff 10 

1092 Michael Strogoff (large type, illustrated edition) 20 

414 Dick Sand; or, Captain at Fifteen. Part l.% 10 

414 Dick Sand; or, Captain at Fifteen. Part II 10 

466 Great Voyages and Great Navigators. Part 1 10 

466 Great Voyages and Great Navigators. Part II 10 

466 Great Voyages and Great Navigators. Part III 20 

505 The Field of Ice (Illustrated) 10 

510 The Pearl of Lima 10 

520 Round the Moon (Illustrated) 10 

634 The 500 Millions of the Begum 10 

647 Tribulations of a Chinaman 10 

673 Dr. Ox’s Experiment 10 

710 Survivors of the Chancellor 1ft 

818 The Steam-House; or, A Trip Across Northern India. 

Part 1 1C 

818 The Steam-House; or, A Trip Across Northern India. 

Part II Id 

1043 The J a n g a d a ; or, Eight Hundred Leagues over the 

Amazou. Part 1 10 

1043 The Jan gad a; or, Eight Hundred Leagues over ther 

Amazon. Part II lft 

1519 Robinsons’ School 1ft 

1677 The Headstrong Turk. First half 10 

MRS. HENRY WOOD’S WORKS. 

1 East Lynne 10 

381 East Lynne (in large type) * 20 

25 Lady Adelaide’s Oath 20 

37 TheMystery 10 

"125 The Mystery (large type edition) 20 

40 The Heir to Ashley C 10 

45 A Life’s Secret io 

5£ The Lost Bank Note 10 

63 Dene Hollow 20 

65 The Nobleman’s Wife. . . . 10 

67 Castle Wafer, and Henry Arkell 10 

78 Bessy Rane 20 

§4 Rupert Hall. . , 10 


THE SEASIDE LIBEAEY. — Ordinary Edition. xes 

;-nn-r..^.. ■ - — e 

MRS. HENRY WOOD’S WORKS.-Contiimed. 

83 Verner’s Pride 20 

92 Mrs. Halliburton’s Troubles . 20 

106 The Master of Greylands . 20 

115 Within the Maze •••• 20 

124 Squire Trevlyn’s Heir 20 

143 The Haunted Tower 10 

220 George Canterbury’s Will 20 

256 Lord Oakburn’s Daughters 20 

288 The Channings 20 

310 Roland Yorke . 20 

328 The Shadow of Ashlydyat 20 

349 Elster’s Folly 20 

357 Red Court Farm 20 

365 Oswald Cray 20 

373 St. MartinVEve 20 

443 Pomeroy Abbey 20 

467 Edina...., 20 

508 Orville College 20 

914 Johnny Ludlow. Pari 1 20 

914 Johnny Ludlow. Part II 20 

*054 A Tale of Sin 10 

1076 Anne ; or, The Doctor’s Daughter 10 

1094 Rose Lodge 10 

U17 Lost in the Post, and Other Tales 10 

E128 Robert Ashton’s Wedding Day, and Other Tales 10 

‘166 Court Netherleigh 20 

For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address, post- 
age free, on receipt of 12 cents for single numbers, and 25 cents for 
jouble numbers, by the publisher. Parties ordering by mail will 
$£ase order by numbers. 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

§!« 17 to S 7 Vandewater Su*e©fc, Hew Voilfe-. 




MUNRO’S PUBLICATIONS. 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY— POCKET EDITION. 


[continued from fourth page.] 


NO. 

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256 

257 

258 

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262 

263 

264 

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266 

267 

268 

269 

270 

270 

271 

271 

272 

273 

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281 

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283 

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285 


PRICE. 

The Mystery. By Mrs. Henry Wood. 15 
Mr. Smith : A Part of His Life. By 

L. B. Walford 15 

Beyond Recall. By Adeline Sergeant 10 
Cousins. By L. B. Walford. . . . . 20 

The Bride of Monte-Cristo. A Sequel 
to “The Count of Monte-Cristo,” 

By Alexander Dumas 10 

Proper Pride. By B. M. Croker 10 

A Fair Maid. By F. W. Robinson . . 20 
The Count of Monte-Cristo. Parti. 

By Alexander Dumas. 20 

The Count of Monte Cristo. Part II. 

By Alexander Dumas. 20 

An Ishmaelite. By Miss M. E. Braddon 15 
Piddouche, A French Detective. By 
Fortune Du Boisgobey. ......... 30 

Judith Shakespeare: Her Love Af- 
fairs and Other Adventures. By 

William Black . . 15 

The Water-Babies. A Fanry Tale for 
a Land-Baby. By the Rev. Charles 

Kingsley . — 10 

Laurel \ T ane; or. The Girls’ Con- 
spiracy. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh 

Miller . ... 20 

Lady Gay’s Pride; or. The Miser’s 
Treasure. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh 

Miller 20 

Lancaster's Choice. By Mrs. Alex. 

McVeigh Miller 20 

The Wandering Jew. Part I. By Eu- 
gene Sue. ... 20 

The Wandering Jew. Part II. By 

Eugene Sue 20 

The Mysteries of Paris. Part I. By 

Eugene Sue. 20 

The Mysteries of Paris. Part II By 

Eugene Sue 20 

The Little Savage. Captain Marryat 10 
Love and Mirage : or. The Waiting on 
an Island. By M. Betham- Ed wards 10 
Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Prin- 
cess of Great Britain and Ireland. 
Biographical Sketch and Letters. . 10 

The Three Brides. Charlotte M. Yonge 10 
Under the Lilies and Roses. By Flor- 
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The Surgeon’s Daughters. By Mrs. 
Henry Wood. A Man of His Word. 

By W. E. Norris. .... 10 

For Life and Love. By Alison 10 

Little Goldie. Mrs. Sumner Hayden 20 
Omnia Vanitas. A Tale of Society. 

By Mrs. Forrester ................ 10 

The Squire’s Legacy. By Mary Cecil 

Hay ‘ 15 

Donal Grant. By George MacDonald 15 
The Sin of a Lifetime. By the author 

of “ Dora Thorne ” 10 

Doris. By “ The Duchess ” 10 

The Gambler’s Wife 20 

[continued on last 


NO. PRICE. 

286 The Iron Hand. By F. Warden. .... 20 

287 At War With Herself. By the author 

of “ Dora Thorne 10 

288 From Gloom to Sunlight. By the au- 

thor of “ Dora Thorne ” 10 

289 John Bull’s Neighbor in Her True 

Light. By a “ Brutal Saxon ” 10 

290 Nora’s Love Test. By Mary Cecil Hay 20 

291 Love’s Warfare. By the author of 

“Dora Thorne” 10 

292 A Golden Heart. By the author of 

“ Dora Thorne . 10 

293 The Shadow of a Sin. By the author 

of “ Dora Thorne ” .. . 10 

294 Hilda. By the author of “ Dora 


295 


Thorne”, 10, 


By the author of 


A Woman’s War. 

“Dora Thorne” 10 

296 A Rose in Thorns. By the author 

of “Dora Thorne”., ... .... 10 

297 Hilary’s Folly. By the author of 

“ Dora Thorne ” 10 

298 Mttchelhurst Place. By Margaret 

Veley. ...... ... 10 

299 The Fatal Lilies, and A Bride from. 

the Sea. By the author of “Dora* 
Thorne ” , . , . 10 

300 A Gilded Sin, and A Bridge of Love, 

By tire author of “ Dora Thorne . . 10 

301 Dark Days. B 3 t Hugh Conway . . 10 

302 The Blafcchford Bequest. By Hugh 

Conway. 10 

303 Ingledew House, and More Bitter than 

Death. By the author of “ Dora 
Thorne ”. . . . . . , 10 

304 In Cupid’s Net. By the author of 

“ Dora Thorne”. . , . ... 

305 A Dead Heart, and Ladj~ Gwendo- 

line’s Dream. By the author of 
‘ ‘ Dora Thorne ”... . , ....... 

306 A Colden Dawn, and Love for a Day. 

By the author of “ Dora Thorne ”. . 

307 Two Kisses, and Like No Other Love. 

By the author of “ Dora Thorne ” . . 

308 Beyond Pardon. ........ 

309 The Pathfinder. By J. Fenimore 

Cooper. 20 

310 The Prairie. By J. Fenimore Cooper 20 

311 Two Years Before the Mast. By R. 

H. Dana, Jr „ . 20 

312 A Week in Killarney. By “The 

Duchess”...., 10 

313 The Lover’s Creed. By Mrs. Cashel 

Hoey.... 15 

314 Peril. By Jessie Fothergill 20 

315 The Mistletoe Bough. Edited by 

Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

316 Sworn to Silence; or, Aline Rodney’s 

Secret. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh 
Miller 20 

317 By Mead and Stream. By Charles 

Gibbon 20 

PAGE OF COVER.] 


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10 

10 

10 

20 


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MUNRO’S PUBLICATIONS. 

THE SEASIDE LIBRARY-POCKET EDITION. 

[continued from third page of cover.] 


318 The Pioneers ; or, The Sources of the 

Susquehanna. By J. Fenimore 
Cooper 20 

319 Face to Face : A Fact in Seven Fa- 

bies. By R. E. Francillon 10 

320 A Bit of Human Nature. By David 

Christie Murray 10 

321 The Prodigals: And Their Inherit- 

ance. By Mrs. Oliphant 10 

322 A Woman’s Love-Story 10 

323 A Willful Maid 20 

324 In Luck at Last. By Walter Besant. 10 

325 The Portent. By George Macdonald. 10 

326 Phantastes. A Faerie Romance for 

Men and Women. By George Mac- 
donald 10 

327 Raymond’s Atonement. (From the 

German of E. Werner.) By Chris- 
tina Tyrrell 20 

328 Babiole, the Pretty Milliner. (Trans- 

lated from the French of Fortune 
Du Boisgobey. First half 20 

329 The Polish Jew. (Translated from 

the French by Caroline A; Merighi.) 

By Erckmann-Chatrian 10 

330 May Blossom; or, Between Two 

Loves. By Margaret Lee 20 

331 Gerald. By Eleanor C. Price 20 

332 Judith Wynne. A Novel 20 

333 Frank Fairlegh ; or, Scenes from the 

Life of a Private Pupil. By Frank 
E. Smedley 20 

334 A Marriage of Convenience. By Har- 

riett Jay 10 

335 The White Witch. A Novel 20 

336 Philistia. By Cecil Power 20 


337 Memoirs and Resolutions of Adam 

Graeme of Mossgray, Including 
Some Chronicles of the Borough of 
Fendie. By BIrs. Oliphant 20 

338 The Family Difficulty. By Sarah 

Doudney 10 

339 Mrs. Vereker’s Courier Maid. By 

Mrs. Alexander 10 

341 Bladolin Rivers ; or. The Little Beauty ; 

of Red Oak Seminary. By Laura 
Jean Libbey 20 

342 The Baby, and One New Year’s Eve. 

By “The Duchess” 10 

343 The Talk of the Town. By James 

Payn 20 

344 “ The Wearing of the Green.” By 

Basil 20 

345 Madam. By BIrs. Oliphant 20 

346 Tumbledown Farm. By Alan Muir.. 10 

347 As Avon Flows. By Henry Scott Yince 20 

348 From Post to Finish. A Racing Ro- 

mance. By Hawley Smart 20 

349 The Two Admirals. A Tale of the 

Sea. By J. Fenimore Cooper 20 

350 Diana of the Crossways. By George 

Meredith 10 

351 The House on the Moor. By BIrs. 

Oliphant 20 

352 At Any Cost. By Edward Garrett 10 

353 The Black Dwarf, and A Legend of 

Blontrose. By Sir Walter Scott 20 

354 The Lottery of Life. A Story of 

New York Twenty Years Ago. By 
John Brougham 20 

355 That Terrible Blan. By W. E. Norris. 

The Princess Dagomar of Poland. 

By Heinrich Felbermann 10 


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